Existence: What the fuck is going on?

[Mudhammam]

The OP and the Kurt Vonnegut poem took me back to a few silly memories. What follows is the first time I pondered my existence. I've hidden it because it doesn't add much to the conversation and it's pretty fucking silly.

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I was somewhere around 9 years old sitting in my living in Akron, Ohio, staring at the Christmas tree, when an old piece of information surfaced, which was that plants are alive. I had no concept of being alive yet unaware, so I of course anthropomorphized a self for the tree. I suddenly felt sad and lucky. Sad that the tree was a tree and lucky that I was me. A sort of dread came over me as the thought entered that I could have been the tree, but, for reasons not obvious to me, I ended up a human, a human I called me, and the now weirdly present Christmas Tree could have been a person, or an animal. Or could it? The feeling that came over me is hard to explain with words and its almost even more difficult to feel, as it is fleeting. Maybe its hard to explain with words because I have a hard time keeping that emotion, or maybe it's hard to keep that emotion because I have no words for it.

This was the first of many "identity crises', and I still have a hard time pinpointing exactly what it was that was so revelatory at the time. Most of it sounds like borderline woo to me now. I spend a hell of a lot less time getting lost in thoughts like that nowadays, which I attribute to acceptance, exhaustion, and a rowdy 9 year old.

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Thanks Exian. I don't think it's borderline woo, I think coming to terms with identity and what it means to be "you" versus, say, a chimpanzee or a cat (I often wonder what it must be like to be them), and speculating if they have any notion of "this is MY life, MY sensations," leads to some very peculiar, sad, yet even ecstatic thoughts. I've worked with the mentally and physically handicapped for about 8 years, and I often wonder the same things about them (the severe cases of mental impairment).