Living Inside Your Head

"Reality exists in the human mind and nowhere else", who said that quote again?

Sometimes, I just wake up and certain thought streams keep flowing around my head like bees flocking around a hive.

Upon landing fully into my body like a hand fully inside a glove, it started to occur to me that this is one of those statements with a nuanced interpretation, in that it can be proven to be true yet not true at the same time.

As humans, we exist more in our minds than in the environment around us, even though the latter shapes everything we think we know about existence.

As per definition, reality is the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may appear or might be imagined.

But then, who decides what "actually exists" means?

I personally like to put it into two categories.

The first one being what our five senses can perceive tangibly as immediate, undeniable truth.

If I put my hand above a burning stove, my hand will get burnt instantly. It doesn't require my mind to persuade me that heat exists or that pain is real. My body responds before my thoughts even catch up.

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What Exists Without You

The second category deals with everything that exists whether we're aware of it or not.

We don't need to see or think of whales for whales to exist. They exist independently of us.

Much of this is the case for the animal kingdom and also for the wind moving through empty forests where no human will probably ever walk.

However, even that "independent" reality only becomes real to us once it enters our minds.

The whale doesn't exist in my personal reality until I learn about whales.

The burn from the stove is just heat and damaged tissue until my brain interprets it as pain, and high heat equals danger, a lesson learned. Noted for future reference.

So maybe both categories collapse into one, in that everything we call "reality" is filtered through our minds, interpreted, given meaning, and stored as our personal version of what's true.

By the way, are thoughts even real?

The Weight of Weightless Things

Thoughts are beyond the realm of the five senses, which puts them into the "not real" category of the first category.

I can't touch a worry, smell a memory, or weigh a dream. Still here I am, entire days shaped by thoughts that technically don't exist in the physical world.

But if thoughts can change my breathing, influence my decisions, and alter my relationships while also literally rewire my brain and change my behaviour, then how can we say they're not real?

Now, the question isn't whether thoughts are real, but more so whether "real" is even the right word.

Thoughts are something else entirely, abstract from a physical sense but undeniably powerful forces that shape the only reality we'll ever actually experience, which is the one inside our heads.

Your Personal Version of Everything

Of course, this doesn't imply that objective reality doesn't exist. I think it does to a certain extent and is worthy of exploration.

The only reality we can arguably ever truly know through our minds is the one our minds create from the raw materials of existence.

So in that sense, we're all living in two worlds at once. The one that exists without us, and the one that only exists because of us.

That opening quote comes from George Orwell's 1984. Though in the novel, it's used to show how dangerous it can be when someone else tries to control the reality inside your mind.


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