The Real and Reality are not the same. Re-ality is only the environmental experience one has because of our tendency to experience the things around us as background, merely existing, just there. But nothing is just there, and therefore Reality is like an illusion. It is like an illusion because, although what you encounter may be correlated to a real object that is there, the encounter itself is not with that object, but its sensual representation to your perception. It follows that although your reception of the object may be a very good index of it, you can never be quite sure that this is the case. Nevertheless, we hold that there must be something there in the Real, beyond Reality, because the correlation is the best evidence we will ever find of our own existence—not as subjects, but as Real, existing objects ourselves. Real objects—including ourselves—elude our direct contact or understanding, but provide endless opportunity for aligning ourselves in search of better understanding, and this is the motivational impetus of Object-Oriented Ontology: simply the love for, and wish to gain a better understanding of, the Other...of which oneself, ironically, is an example.
