I have always detested any departure from reality, an attitude

Host: The room was small, lit only by a single lamp flickering on a cluttered desk. Rain slid down the windowpane in slow, uneven lines, like memories that refused to stay still. A faint smell of coffee and damp books filled the air. Somewhere outside, a clock tower chimed — soft, echoing, distant.

Jack sat by the window, his shoulders hunched, his eyes reflecting the pale light. Papers lay scattered across the table, full of scribbled notes, diagrams, and half-finished thoughts. Jeeny stood behind him, watching quietly — her hands folded, her expression thoughtful.

Host: The mood in the room was heavy — the kind that drifts in when truth feels too close to speak aloud.

Jeeny: “Jean Piaget once said, ‘I have always detested any departure from reality, an attitude which I relate to my mother's poor mental health.’” (She spoke softly, as if reading the words from the air itself.) “It’s strange, isn’t it? That he spent his life studying the mind — yet was haunted by it, too.”

Jack: (without looking up) “That’s what makes it honest. Reality’s the only ground that doesn’t move beneath you. Once you start escaping into fantasy, you lose the map — and maybe yourself with it.”

Host: The lamplight trembled, casting a faint shadow across Jack’s face — the kind that made him look both tired and unyielding.

Jeeny: “You say that like reality is something solid. But what if it’s not? What if reality depends on who’s seeing it? A child’s world isn’t the same as an adult’s — Piaget himself proved that. Maybe imagination isn’t an escape at all. Maybe it’s a different kind of truth.”

Jack: (turning toward her, his voice sharp) “A truth that isn’t real isn’t truth, Jeeny. My mother used to talk to people who weren’t there. She called it imagination. I called it madness.”

Host: A silence fell, thick and electric. The rain outside intensified, drumming harder against the glass. Jeeny took a slow breath, her eyes softening with empathy.

Jeeny: “I’m sorry, Jack.”

Jack: (shrugs) “Don’t be. It just taught me something — the mind’s the most dangerous liar there is. When people start believing what isn’t there, everything else crumbles.”

Jeeny: “But isn’t every artist, every thinker, every visionary — a little detached from what’s ‘there’? Galileo saw worlds no one else could. Van Gogh saw colors others didn’t. If they stayed only within ‘reality,’ we’d still be staring at flat horizons.”

Jack: “Sure. But they came back. They brought something useful back from the edge. My mother didn’t. That’s the difference — creation versus delusion.”

Host: The lamp flickered again, as if uncertain whether to keep burning. Jack’s words hung in the air like smoke — heavy, invisible, suffocating.

Jeeny: “Maybe she was running from pain, not chasing delusion. Sometimes people leave reality because it’s unbearable, not because they’re weak.”

Jack: “That’s the excuse everyone uses before they fall apart. The world hurts — that’s not news. But you don’t survive it by pretending it’s something else. You face it.”

Jeeny: “And what if facing it breaks you?”

Host: The question lingered. Jack’s fingers tightened around his coffee cup until the porcelain creaked. For a moment, the room felt smaller — the walls inching closer, the air thickening with unspoken grief.

Jack: “Then you break, I guess. But at least you know where you stand.”

Jeeny: (quietly) “That’s not living, Jack. That’s enduring. There’s a difference.”

Host: She stepped forward, the floorboards creaking beneath her. The light caught her eyes, and for a second they glowed — not with idealism, but with something older, sadder: compassion.

Jeeny: “Piaget didn’t hate imagination. He feared what happens when the mind forgets how to come home. But imagination itself — that’s how we make sense of pain. Children invent stories to survive confusion. Adults invent meaning to survive loss. Maybe your mother wasn’t lost — maybe she was just trying to rewrite the unbearable.”

Jack: (leans back, his voice low and rough) “You always make suffering sound poetic. But madness isn’t poetry, Jeeny. It’s noise. It’s nights you can’t trust what you see. It’s watching someone disappear while their body stays right in front of you.”

Host: His voice cracked slightly at the end — a fracture too small to break him, but big enough to reveal the wound beneath his skepticism.

Jeeny: (softly) “Then maybe it’s not madness that destroys us. Maybe it’s loneliness.”

Jack: “Loneliness is real. That’s the difference.”

Jeeny: “So is love. And faith. And dreams. You can’t measure them, but they’re as real as gravity. Reality isn’t just what you can touch, Jack — it’s also what touches you.”

Host: The lamplight warmed, spilling gold across her face. Outside, the rain slowed, the storm exhausted but not gone.

Jack: “You think you can redefine reality with words. But facts don’t bend because we wish they did.”

Jeeny: “No, but perception does. And perception is reality — at least, the only one any of us ever really live in. Piaget studied that — how children build their worlds from what they believe. Maybe the tragedy wasn’t that his mother saw things that weren’t there. Maybe it was that he was too afraid to see beyond what was.”

Host: Jack looked at her, startled by the gentleness in her challenge. His eyes, usually so sharp, seemed to flicker — like someone who’d forgotten the exact coordinates of his certainty.

Jack: “You’re saying fear of madness made him blind to wonder.”

Jeeny: “Yes. And maybe fear of grief made you the same.”

Host: The room fell silent again, but this time it wasn’t tense — it was reflective, like the pause after thunder. The rain had turned into a whisper, tapping faintly against the glass, rhythmic and calming.

Jack: (after a long pause) “When I was a kid, she used to tell me there were colors in the dark. That if I stared long enough, I’d see them move. I told her she was crazy.” (He exhales.) “Now, sometimes, I think I do see them.”

Jeeny: “Maybe she wasn’t crazy, Jack. Maybe she just saw what others couldn’t.”

Host: He smiled faintly — not in joy, but in surrender. The kind of smile that comes when resistance finally collapses under the quiet weight of truth.

Jack: “So maybe reality’s bigger than I thought.”

Jeeny: “Or maybe it’s kinder than you’ve allowed it to be.”

Host: The lamp steadied its glow. The rain stopped completely. Outside, the city lights shimmered against the wet streets, like veins of gold running through darkness.

Jack stood, walked to the window, and placed his hand against the glass. His reflection looked back at him — weary, human, alive.

Jack: “Maybe Piaget was right to hate departure from reality. But maybe the real tragedy is not leaving it — it’s never returning to it with something more.”

Jeeny: “That’s the balance, isn’t it? To dream without vanishing. To imagine without losing ground.”

Host: She moved beside him, their reflections side by side in the glass — one anchored in reason, the other in compassion. Between them, the city pulsed — full of lives, illusions, truths, and dreams intertwining like threads of the same tapestry.

Host: The camera pulled back slowly — out of the room, through the rain-washed window, into the night where the sound of the last drops met the hum of distant streets.

And in that moment, the world seemed to whisper:

Reality is not what we escape from — it’s what we keep trying to make bearable.

Host: The light flickered once, then steadied — as if even it, too, had found a reason to stay.