The Nature of Reality

You know you’re getting older when just about every woman under the age of 40 seems attractive. And a heck of lot of the 40+ women are good looking too.

Maybe it’s not that I’m getting older, but rather just hornier.

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about the nature of reality. Is reality what we think it is, or are we like ants on the side of the highway who think they know what’s going on, but in reality have absolutely no idea?

Is the whole universe just a computer simulation? Are we just characters in a cosmic game? Am I the only one who truly has consciousness? Maybe we all have our own simulation. In my simulation, my neighbor may jump off a cliff, but in his simulation, he doesn’t. In my simulation, a friend may get killed in a car accident, but in his simulation, he survives. Maybe I won’t ever die because I would never choose to die in my own simulation.

The only hole in this argument is this: If this is my simulation, I’d make every woman on earth my concubine. And that ain’t happening, so there’s gotta be a glitch somewhere.

But in all seriousness, there must be more to reality than what we actively perceive. I watched one of those news magazine shows on ABC last night (Prime Time, I think), and they had a story on two identical twins separated at birth. These women never knew they had an identical twin, until one of them began searching for her biological mother in her mid-30’s and discovered that she had an identical twin who had been adopted to different parents. They met each other in 1995.

At their first meeting, which was recorded, they both brought gifts, and the gifts ended up being the exact same thing. And it wasn’t a sweater or a CD or some common object that could easily get duplicated. It was a little coaster with a painting on it and a short poem. The odds of such a coincidence are astronomical. And that’s not the only time they’ve gotten each other the same gift for a holiday or birthday. And of course, they have the experiences of one picking up the phone to call the other, and the phone rings right at that moment and it’s the other sister. Or they sense something’s wrong and they call and something bad has happened, etc, etc.

Clearly there is something else going on there – a crossing of brain waves or something.

Anyway, I just think there’s a lot more to reality than we perceive or understand. I’m not necessarily suggesting it’s a “supernatural” phenomenon...I’m sure it can be explained scientifically, and will be some day...but it’s just important not to assume that we perceive and understand everything.