Congratulations, You’re Real!

Do you ever hear a recording of yourself and realize the voice other people hear is completely different from the one in your head?

Have you ever noticed that you somehow went from wild-eyed dreamer and anti-establishment protestor to a spreadsheet-making, PowerPoint-wielding corporate powerhouse?

Or caught yourself using a weird little verbal tic, a catchphrase or automatic pleasantry, that you’re not sure where you picked up, but now it’s apparently part of your DNA?

Congratulations! You’ve just experienced the deeply humbling realization that you are not only experiencing the world, but are also being perceived by it. How humiliating!

These brief shocks of reality are your brain stepping back from thinking about everything else and thinking about itself instead. Sometimes called an “existential flash,” they usually last only a few seconds before your brain goes back to braining, and you return to your default setting: a semi-conscious meat machine with a skeletal frame, powered entirely by magic and anxiety.

I, however, like to suffer. So I’m dragging out the experience.

There was a moment, just moments ago, when I realized my own affectation didn’t sound like me. Mid-sentence, mid-conversation, it felt as if someone else entirely had taken over my voice.

And at the same time, another part of my brain was calmly noting: This is how you always talk.

We all have personas we put on for the outside world. Deep down, the real you is basically a caveman with an iPhone. Picking your nose, scratching your butt, and sniffing your fingers. But the version of me I am in front of the person I trust most shouldn’t feel like a stranger. And yet here I am, wondering what passing intellect briefly possessed me just long enough to make me sound smart.

There’s no possession here, though. That is me. And that’s how I always talk. (Like an intellect, obviously. All the time. Please don’t fact-check this.)

The me that lives in my head is different from the me that’s actually out there making friends, forgetting names, and playing it off like I’m effortlessly cool. Sometimes I wonder, if I met myself in the wild, would I even recognize me? Would we be friends?

Here’s a fun and slightly horrifying fact: you’ve never actually seen your own face. You only ever experience it through reflections or photographs. Even now, as you’re reading this and becoming aware of your own body, you’re seeing your hands and moving limbs from a first-person point of view. And your brain is quietly erasing chunks of that vision to save you from unnecessary information overload.

Am I freaking you out yet?

We’ve all been there. But maybe there’s value in leaning into that discomfort instead of defaulting back to the moving-meat-mobile autopilot. Because honestly, do we even know what it means to be human? Or are we just going through the motions, convincing ourselves we do?

… Anyways.

The Simpsons is on. The episode where DCF takes the kids away from Homer and Marge (we’ve all been there, right?). Time to plop myself on the couch and try to forget that the human brain can dream of your own death and not necessarily wake you up… just keep the dream rolling, as if you kept existing.

Doh!