zen_tom

As I type this, a figure sits at a desk, it's fingers tapping at keys on a plastic keyboard, its eyes monitoring the patterns on the screen in front. A heart beats, blood courses and the lungs rhythmically draw air in and out in order to bring oxygen in from the outside world to help keep the whole thing running.

Behind the eyes, a thing lurks, looking through the eyes, listening through the ears, sensing the world around it, experiencing it, and able to shape it through control of its limbs and actions. A thing that thinks, plans and considers.

Something with an identity, a self-aware thing. Me. What is it? What is this thing that thinks, "I" or "Me"? Trapped inside this shell, with no recollection of ever having been outside of it, and every evening it voluntarily submits itself to non-existence for 6-8 hours.

How did it come to be aware of itself? What is it not aware of? Is it something real, or a self-perpetuating illusion?

This issue continues to confound, confuse, and amaze me. Not least because it is so fundamental to every moment we live, and because so few people have the slightest clue. It just dumbfounds me. I want to understand it, but I can't. I can't seem to remove my own personal experience from an explanation, and come up with a reasonable answer.

I'm not necessarily looking to others for answers - just ideas, or perhaps even just some acknowledgement that we can't even explain what we are. I may be able to comfort myself with "I think therefore I am", but I can't even begin to wonder what it is 'I' is supposed to mean, or even whether it is real or not, it is certainly something tenuous and fragile - how do you measure whether something has an 'I' or not?