As anyone who has ever tried to escape reality can tell you, you’re more than likely to end up back in it. We can imagine things to be different. We can dream away the night, but when the sun comes up, it’s the same sun as yesterday. We find ourselves in the same material world at the same fixed place in time’s continuum. Despite our ingenuity and resourcefulness, we are still bound by natural laws. We can undergo joint replacement and cosmetic surgery, but we can’t stop aging. We can disown family members but we can’t change our DNA. We can build B52 bombers, but we can’t grow wings.

However, this doesn’t mean that we are slaves to reality. The fact that we have the desire to change things that don’t seem right, along with the imagination and the ability to take some kind of action despite the awareness that we’ll probably end up a bit worse for the wear, makes our efforts worthwhile. It is the essence of being human to recognize, either intuitively or through experience, the need for change, and to act upon it through our own free will. I think it is through the notion of willfulness that we come to understand what freedom really is.

Literature and film are chock full of stories relating the theme of freedom as a state of mind. Aesop’s fable “The Wolf and the House Dog” is about a nearly starving wolf who comes upon a well fed and healthy dog. The dog describes all the advantages to living in a house-shelter, food, warmth. The wolf ponders such a leisurely, untroubled life until it notices the calluses around the dog’s neck. The wolf then realizes the cost of domestication and decides he would rather be free in the wild than a slave fettered to a master.

In “Eternal Sunshine for the Spotless Mind” (2004) Jim Carrey plays opposite Kate Winslet in a love conflict story. Both suffer from some form of emotional disorder. As a means of resolving their anguish, they choose to undergo a procedure that erases all their memories of each other. While the procedure is effective, we are left to wonder whether something important is missing in their lives. Could weathering the storm of relationship vicissitudes have provided them with a more complete and soulful existence?

In “The Truman Show” (1998), another great film starring Carrey, Truman Burbank lives in a world in which he is being filmed constantly by a megalomaniacal producer (Ed Harris as Christoff). Previously unaware that his entire life has been filmed, Truman begins to suspect that he is being spied on. While others (all the characters in this fake community, including Truman’s wife, played by Laura Linney) try to convince him that he is paranoid over nothing, Truman sets out to uncover the truth. Despite his fear of boats and water, he manages to sail across a fake sea to the end of the movie set, where he ultimately crashes into a wall. In what I consider to be one of the greatest acting performances in film history, Truman/Jim Carrey beats his fists against the wall in agony, overwhelmed by despair over the realization that his whole life was a lie. He had been a pawn, a puppet, a toy object manipulated by a false god. Heroically, Truman (a true man) chooses to leave the safe but artificial town of Seaside and enter the real world in which he at least can be free to discover who he really is.

There are countless stories, from the Old Testament to modern science fiction, that examine the complex idea of freedom. The blue versus red pills in the Matrix; the implanted memories in Total Recall; the golden calf in Exodus; the tin man, the scarecrow, and the lion in Emerald City — all pose the fundamental question regarding man’s quest to understand truth and distinguish between reality and artificiality. Are we complacent in a world where we have no free will? Or are we more like Truman, who would tear down the walls that imprison our souls?

The internet-driven world of today is infested with geopolitical political players who use technology and psychology to control the common man’s thought process. The line between what is real and what is contrived — between Truth and lies — has all but vanished. That is the reality. There is no escape. But there is the possibility of change, if only enough of us are willing.

Pete Howard, author of Rosebud Dreamworld, lives in Dunkirk.