Reality: “Hi there. Do you have a few minutes to chat?”

Human: “Uh, I’m kinda busy at the moment.”

Reality: “When are you ever not busy? It seems like you’re always too busy to talk to me.”

Human: “Look, Ms. Reality, I talk to you plenty! In case you haven’t noticed, you have an annoying habit of inserting yourself into my affairs at the most inconvenient times.”

Reality: “I see. Well, now that we’re having such a pleasant conversation, I was wondering if you wouldn’t mind talking about a topic that we always seem to avoid?”

Human: “And what would that be? Not that I’m agreeing to discuss any topics that you come up with.”

Reality: “Well, I was hoping we could talk about the way you humans really are, as opposed to the endless ways that you think you could be, or should be, or want to be. I figured we could keep things simpler that way. You know, less distractions?”

Human: “Here’s the problem with your suggestion. Every time we get on this topic, it always seems to have a bad ending. War, disease, financial panic, all sorts of wonderful stuff. So, perhaps you’ll understand my reluctance to engage in any conversations with you.”

Reality: “I really don’t mean to be critical, but perhaps if you paid more attention to me before these bad endings happened, then maybe you could avoid them in the first place?”

Human: “Your ignorance of human behavior continues to amaze me. Just to recap what I’ve explained to you countless times: Your existence is ephemeral. You don’t really exist until you do. You pop out of nowhere at the worst possible times. Like take the economy, for instance. You want us to avoid a financial panic, but your timing is all off. While we’re having fun blowing beautiful financial bubbles, you want to intrude on the party and tell us to stop!