What really is real?

Movies like Memento messes up my mind. It makes me wonder about what we actually know about the world. We can't trust our memories; science has proven that we have a tendency to create memories. And when you start thinking about it, we probably can't trust our vision either. I recently visited the Museum of Science where they have a Seeing is Deceiving exhibit. In the exhibit, simple things a foot away appear to be distinct colors, only to be the same colors when you approach them. It blows my mind. I'm sure a scientific explanation, involving reflection and light, for why that happens exist but it still makes you wonder. How relative everything is, especially with senses, where everything is decoded in my brain with no way to compare what's in my brain to what's in your brain.  My perception of the color black is probably not the same as yours. We may associate the same constant perception with black because that is what we are taught and because black is there and we can see it. But it's all relative. Who knows?!

As for the question in the post title? Some people will say that anything you can experience with your senses is real and anything you can't isn't. Others will say nothing is real; it's all made up. And others will say a dozen plus other things. For me though, and probably many others, the answer is I don't know. That's just an answer I don't know. Although it is fun to hypothesize answers.

For all we know, we could just be an experiment some greater being is conducting, similar to how mice are experimented on -- I doubt they know they are in an experiment. And as easily as experiments with mice are thrown out, we could be thrown out too. Our existence could be completely meaningless, just a petri dish with redundant information.

And sometimes all that can leave you feeling a little despondent. That is until you remember that you are in fact just a tiny speck in the universe and that your time here is pretty insignificant in comparison to the universe's lifespan. And that is when you realize that you are living life for the little moments that matter to you, for the causes that matter to you now, and for the changes that will effect your life and the people around you. It's a choice, you can feel very little about yourself or you can continue living as if you matter. To make your life matter to your immediate time and not the universe's time. In the end, it probably won't matter to the universe whether I choose to go down one path in life or another, but living a fulfilling life for yourself is probably more enjoyable than a dull life because in your's and mine's relative mind, a human life is still a long time, I think.