The World You’re Given

In the movie, The Truman Show, the main character, Truman Burbank, lives inside an artificial world — a giant movie set where everything, from the streets to the sky, is carefully controlled.

At one point, a journalist asks the show’s creator why Truman never realizes the truth. The producer replies:

“We accept the reality of the world with which we’re presented.”

In other words, Truman doesn’t question his reality because he has no reason to. It’s the only world he’s ever known.

But how different are we, really?

We live in our own constructed worlds — shaped not by hidden cameras and TV producers, but by where we were born, what we were taught, and who we spend time with. If you grew up in a small town where everyone gets married at 23, you might assume that’s just what people do. If you were raised in a family that never talked about money, you might not even think to question your own financial habits. Like Truman, we accept what we’re given.

In a 2005 commencement speech at Kenyon College, David Foster Wallace posed a similar case:

There are these two young fish swimming along and they happen to meet an older fish swimming the other way, who nods at them and says “Morning, boys. How’s the water?”

And the two young fish swim on for a bit, and then eventually one of them looks over at the other and goes “What the hell is water?”

The problem is, most of us don’t realize we’re operating within a framework until we bump up against its edges.

• Maybe you travel to another country and see that people live completely differently.
• Maybe you meet someone who questions an assumption you’ve held your whole life.

These moments are like cracks in the set of The Truman Show — glitches that make you pause and wonder: Wait… is the world I’ve been living in the only option?

So how do you avoid getting Truman Show’d?

The trick is to actively seek out different perspectives. Read books that challenge your beliefs. Talk to people outside your bubble. Question traditions — not to be a contrarian, but to make sure they actually serve you. Most importantly, cultivate the habit of zooming out and asking, Is this true, or is it just the world I’ve been given?

Because if you don’t, you might spend your whole life inside a carefully scripted reality — never realizing that, just beyond the horizon, there’s an entirely different world waiting for you to step into it.

—KB