Perception and Reality

Two days ago I was watching a movie and one of the people said something that I feel relates to this class and the recent topic we have been dealing with. In the movie one of the characters said, "Perception is reality, truth has nothing to do with reality, reality is what we make to be true." This immediately sounds like a constructivist view and I was so shocked that this was in a lifetime movie. I learned to agree with this view when I took an AP literature class in high school with led to numerous discussions on existentialism. In the class I was taught that there is no such thing as the "real world." What constitutes as the real world is what we get out of it. We define ourselves through the actions we take and outside of our own definition of our lives there are no reason as to why we are alive. I found this morbid, however I was convinced that this was true. I do believe that perception has a big deal to do with how we view the world, because we have nothing else to go on but perception. However, I don't think that it is only self-perception. I believe that truth consists of how we view the world along with what is really in the world. I can see how perception seems to imply truth, but what about the notion of illusions and the idea of seeing isn't believing? Take this scenario for example, picture yourself in class and some mad man comes and punches the teacher and leaves. The police comes and asks for our own individual account of what happened. Out of everyone in class whose recount of what happened would be correct? Whose would be wrong? Think about it................................................................................................................................No one. No one would be right and no one would be wrong. Everyone is write and everyone is wrong. My teacher gave me this scenario to illustrate how we each construct reality, but as I asked before can we really trust our perception if seeing is not always believing?