Are you real? Who are you?

The body does exist, so it demands food, comfort and a sense of hunger, heat, and pain. It depends on context. Form is real, but it is temporarily constructed with particles through eating and repair. I have always believed in my realness. Other people have confirmed to me that they also think I'm real, so I have witnesses. It seems reasonable to think that I am a part of a reality much larger than myself, even though my family exists as well, but sometimes I seem estranged from them at times. A lot of people throughout life ask Are we real? Do we exist on this planet Earth? Well, I know we do, as I eat, sleep, rest, work and repeat, but there is no real identifier that we are here. I have friends, we have a dog and a cat that we feed and walk, and we have food in the cupboard and the fridge. We have furniture that we sit on, sleep on and rest on, and we have a television that we watch television shows on or put in a DVD and watch movies. Some people even pay for television shows that they watch because they're not on normal television. So, I know we are real, especially when we pay bills. To keep the gas, water and electricity on so we can walk in a room and turn a light on or go to the toilet knowing that we can flush a toilet, wash our hands and have a shower or wash clothes, water the garden or simply turn the tap on to drink. If all these things operate after I have paid bills, then I know deep down we must exist. Most men get to the age of fifty and have a midlife crisis, asking the question Who are you? They go in search of expensive boats, bikes, or other women to keep their youth because they don't want to feel that they are getting older; they might want to quit their job or look to move to another area as they are stale with their life or the choices that they have made. Maybe they want more out of life, or just start to realise that they want to find out who they really are. Their life suddenly becomes more meaningful, and knowing that they are getting older scares them, so they chase a more dramatic dream to fulfil their life. There are so many reasons why a person might want to change jobs or career, and not all the time is a mid-life crisis, but a pressure to make significant changes to their lives before it's too late. A Midlife crisis is often a period of self-reflection and re-evaluation prompted by the realisation of aging, significant life changes, and a questioning of one's life choices and purpose. But why, as humans, do we question these answers? I'm pretty sure we know that we exist because we were born, we grew up, went to school, left school, got a job and maybe raised kids, so why do we ask these questions to ourselves? What exactly are we looking for?

Questions can stem from feelings of uncertainty, low self-esteem, or existential angst. Asking why the sky is blue or the grass is green is simply an answer you can Google or ask your parents, but maybe grandparents or our parents have the answer. One day, when I was a little girl, I used to question people all the time. I don't know why; I guess I was just trying to find the answers to things that I didn't know. I would ask my grandmother where she met my grandpa, or ask her about family, what her mother was like growing up, I guess, to establish what her life was like when they had little to no money or what they did for fun? But as I got older and I realised what my grand mother went through her life was sad, she grew up poor and had to get public transport all the time as they didn't own a car, sure my grand father worked as he was in the Navy, but once he got out they lived on minimum wage, only buying things that they needed, they raised four children but they never screamed for anything or complained about anything, they had a roof over there head, food in the stomach and clothes of there back. They played with a minimum of toys, but they had fun being friends with kids in the street, riding their bikes or riding other children's bikes. They used to play in the local park or walk to the local shop to buy a cheap bag of lollies and then share them with the kids they played with. A lot of kids read books, listened to the radio or just used their imagination to play. Kids created their games and toys from materials they found around their homes, and children played games like tag, jump rope, and baseball with homemade balls and sticks. They didn't have social media or internet to look up how to fix a pedal on the bike or a chain, or how to do anything; they asked someone or just learnt something themself by trial and error. Some children even worked by picking fruits and vegetables and setting up little stalls, or delivering paper around the neighbourhood. They didn't make a lot of money, but they taught the children in the area about responsibility. So we know that we are real, but why do we get to an age where we have to question our identity in this world? We didn't question this when we went to play with friends, and we knew the light that came on in the street was the time we had to get home and have dinner, have a bath and relax with family before we went to bed. We would have a drink of warm milk, have a book being read to us before we closed our eyes and had fun doing this all over again the next day with our friends, maybe tomorrow we can go and have a look down by the river instead or ride our bikes a different path, as long as we stayed together in a group to keep safe our parents didn't question us. If we got injured, unless the blood was gushing, we just put some water on it and kept going. If it was really bad, we had to go home and get a Band-Aid and put that on our knee or our elbow. We didn't have to go to the doctors unless we were sick or hospital, either, unless there was something really bad with us that a doctor didn't know how to fix the problem. My father would be at work, and my mother would be cleaning the house or cooking something in the oven, such as an apple pie or some cake for afternoon tea. We didn't have any take-away food as most food was home-cooked. So we know one thing: we do things as humans to survive. We survived the war, we survived depression, so why now do we get to an age where we ask Who are you and Are you real? Well, I know one thing, I am real, but as for others, maybe they are seeking something bigger than we know, and maybe we don't know why we are searching, there is no book or anyone to tell us who we are. We might have just have to look behind us and realise that our family tree can survive all of this and still stand tall, then maybe we shouldn't be looking for answers as we have the answers already, and they came from our family history.