I am my limitations.
June 9, 2016 at 2:06 pm
(This post was last modified: June 9, 2016 at 2:23 pm by bennyboy.)
I've had some amazing experiences in my life. Some of them were dreams that seemed more real than waking life. Some of them were from drugs, from fasting, from extreme fear or extreme boredom. I've seen dragons flying in the midnight sky, I've been mobbed by zombies, I've seen the world pulse with the colors that sounds make. I've thought about quantum physics, and been so disoriented that my world melted away and I was standing in empty space.
I've only scratched the surface. I guess I've experienced less than 1% of what a mind could experience-- probably much less, to be honest. I have to think that the potential is nearly limitless.
But I don't usually hear orchestras of thousands playing Metallica in my mind. I don't usually feel every blade of grass in a field tickling me in the pit of my stomach. I usually sit in a chair, type on a keyboard, and press F5 every couple of hours until text appears, telling me that someone has found whatever I typed suitable enough to serve as a platform for their own ideas, and has hit the "Reply" button.
I think the latter defines me: it's not what I can do, but what I can prevent myself from doing. It's not where I can go, mentally, but where I constantly restrain myself from going. My name is an anchor-- my ego picks a path through all the wonder and magic that the brain is capable of experiencing, and finds a way to put it all in a gray-colored box.
I'm not my brain, I think, or my thoughts, because those really do seem to be limitless. I'm a meme-- the idea that the mind must be controlled at all costs, and that this control must have a name. And when the control breaks down for a moment, and some of that infinite world finally does poke through the crack in the egg, I'm ignorant enough to say, "This is of me." But how could it be?
I've only scratched the surface. I guess I've experienced less than 1% of what a mind could experience-- probably much less, to be honest. I have to think that the potential is nearly limitless.
But I don't usually hear orchestras of thousands playing Metallica in my mind. I don't usually feel every blade of grass in a field tickling me in the pit of my stomach. I usually sit in a chair, type on a keyboard, and press F5 every couple of hours until text appears, telling me that someone has found whatever I typed suitable enough to serve as a platform for their own ideas, and has hit the "Reply" button.
I think the latter defines me: it's not what I can do, but what I can prevent myself from doing. It's not where I can go, mentally, but where I constantly restrain myself from going. My name is an anchor-- my ego picks a path through all the wonder and magic that the brain is capable of experiencing, and finds a way to put it all in a gray-colored box.
I'm not my brain, I think, or my thoughts, because those really do seem to be limitless. I'm a meme-- the idea that the mind must be controlled at all costs, and that this control must have a name. And when the control breaks down for a moment, and some of that infinite world finally does poke through the crack in the egg, I'm ignorant enough to say, "This is of me." But how could it be?
