Random extistential thoughts

This is an entry I wrote in a journal I did for my philosophy course that I recently finished, and I thought it would be fun to post it & see how many people go, "Huh?" Enjoy.

One of the things I take for granted, and yet marvel at when I don’t, is the simple fact that I exist. There’s times where I stop and ponder my own self awareness and think how incredible it is. I am me, and I know I’m me. I’m not someone else, and I live in a world where other self aware people live. But what’s it like to be someone else, and how do others perceive me? Am I really the only one who exists, while everyone else around me is some sort of simulation or projection of my imagination? I was talking with someone about this years ago and she told me that these questions are psychological in nature. Apparently there’s a part of us that thinks we are the only thing that’s real and everything else is not. Talk about your ego!

So how do I know that others exist and that I’m not alone in the universe? How do I know that the world exists? I was listening to a radio program where that very question was put to a philosopher, and I was really struck by his answer. “I know the world exists because the world is constantly telling me so. When I stub my toe the world is telling me it’s there.” So I guess he was saying that our sensory inputs tell us there’s more out there than just us. So what about people? I guess they’re real too because they behave in much the same way I do. The fact that people may also have different opinions and interests tells me that they’re not a part of my imagination. If they were the world would be in my image, and let me tell you the world would look very different if I had my way with it.

Ok, so I know that people aren’t just a projection of my own psyche. But I have to confess something that I have never said to anyone. Sometimes I wonder if I’m in a simulation where I’m being tested under varying conditions, and at the end of my life I wake up somewhere else. The simulation of my life was in fact training for my real existence. Weird, huh? It’s like something out of the Matrix movies, or an episode of Star Trek where, after people who were trapped on the holodeck were freed, asked themselves if they were some simulation in someone else’s holodeck. But after thinking about this from a biblical perspective, I think I may not be far off. We see in scripture that this life is temporal, and that what we do here and now will have consequences on how we live out our lives in eternity. I imagine that when we’re with Jesus we’ll look back at the life we lived here and see how shallow and unreal it was compared to heaven. Maybe then my understanding of existence will be so much bigger than it is now, and that I’ll fully understand what Paul was talking about in Acts when he said, “In Him we live and move, and have our being.”