I want to know what I look like in other peoples’ eyes. I want to know how people see me. No, it’s not my self-esteem that’s in question, but my simple awareness of “myself.” You know that goal people usually have… of “finding themselves?” That’s what I’ve been struggling through for quite a while now. I don’t know who I am. I mean sure, I have a name, an age, a background, memories, etc. But in the end, what makes me me? What is there that is not so easy to point at and say “That’s you.” What is there that requires feeling rather than thought, rather than touch, sight, or anything else? It’s almost metaphysical… or spiritual, if you will. What gives me the right to discuss such matters on such a physical basis? We’re born into this world and we’re told there’s God and there’s science, and you should choose who to believe in. All’s fair and well, but what happens when we’re stuck in a world that only complies with science, and not with both? Is it even possible for a world to comply with both? Is it possible for the physical to interact with the metaphysical? And here we are. We are stuck in a physical world, yet we create discussion of metaphysical instances, events, and the like. To some, what I had mentioned earlier in this post is considers pointless because of the mere fact that we’re stuck in the physical. Or maybe we aren’t stuck anywhere, they’d say. There is only the physical. But where, might I ask, do you derive such a conclusion? From the world you live in? From what the world has taught you and presented to you? Where do you get your evidence from? From this physical world? Exactly.
Or is it, truly, an utterly boring world of the physical? Are we born just because our chromosomes did this and that? Do our eyes close at death, eventually rotting, simply never to be used again? Does our brain decompose at death and take with it our memories, ambitions, likes, and everything else we considered to be metaphysical? Does the world go on after our death, as if another bunch of cells just died? Are we simply living because our heart is still beating?
And so I’m left with my thoughts of life, of the afterlife, of myself, and basically of everything the average human barely thinks about in their lifetime. I doubt I’ll be able to answer any of these question in my life-time. No philosophers, physicists, astronomers, or any other intelligent people have ever been able to answer the most fundamental question of life that summarizes this entire post and that is the pain I feel:
What is?
T.A.