What is the nature of existence? What truly is reality besides that which we perceive ourselves? I’m sitting here at my computer watching Marcus Morris drop 16 points (all on jumpers, too) and it occurs to me that I can’t even be sure that Marcus is a person in the same way that I am a person. Perhaps he is just an automaton projected by my mind, in which case, “everybody” who’s “watching” my “videos” is in fact non-existent. And if Marcus is “real” in the same way that I perceive myself to be “real”, am I just a figment of his imagination, given life and breath by the powers of his mind?
What if I’m the only consciousness in the universe, a single speck of light floating in the ether realm, and everything from the smallest atom to the largest galaxy was crafted by my boundless creativity? It calls into question everything that I view as reality. When I “die”, the whole universe will just be snuffed out like a candle. How many of these light beings are there? What do their worlds look like? Am I the only one? Is it possible to escape the reality I have created and see the totality for what it really is?
But even if we concede that the commonly-accepted nature of reality is indeed the true state of things, who’s to say that it didn’t come into being exactly when I was born and will cease being exactly when I die? A whole grand production put on specifically for my enjoyment, with an elaborate backstory and relateable characters, all rendered totally null as I breathe my last breath and my life terminates.
Somebody should pay me to write this stuff into a book. I need an agent.