Existential

I find it disconcerting that I will never be another person. I think of a person who I have forgotten existed. It isn’t difficult to do, to forget someone exists. They may not forget, but I do. And when I think of this person it startles me to realize that they have existed all along. And I think that it must be drastically different to be that person than it is to be me. But I will never know, because I will never be that person. It’s not that I want to be that specific person, or even that I don’t want to be myself. But a strange feeling enters you when you realize you will never be anyone else. You will never know what that person thinks. You will never know what that person feels. You will only ever know what you think, you will only ever know what you feel. And that person will continue to exist whether you remember them or not. Any idea or concept of the world in which you imagined it centered on you is shattered by this knowledge. It may not be something you consciously think, but it is there: the idea that your consciousness is the only consciousness. The idea that without you the world would no longer exist because you would no longer be there to perceive it existing. When I spell it out it doesn’t make much sense. But it is there nonetheless, and it is there because of how limited I am. Because I will never be another person. The world only exists to me because I am here to perceive it existing.  And the people I forget, to me do not exist. Yet that has little standing in the world. In fact, that is possibly the most disconcerting detail about this realization. The fact that to many, I do not exist. Were the world dependent on one person’s consciousness, it would most likely not be mine. And I would most likely not exist. Because another person would never be me.