How many of us honestly try to live in reality?

A bit more than halfway through the short book “One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich” by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the gulag prisoner narrator notes: “You couldn’t see the barbed wire itself except when you looked into the sun. The sun was very bright; it made you blink.”
If you seek truth, then there will be some pain in the process.
If you seek truth, then
you might discover that your perceived freedom is really a gulag.
If you seek truth, then you might find it more comfortable instead to lower your eyes and simply continue pretending.
Sunlight and reality are often equated, but how many of us in the modern world avoid sunlight every day?
Do any of us really, honestly try to live in reality?
Guy Baker