To find being a person really weird

[beconase]

I know that sounds odd, but every now and then it hits me how weird it is just being a person and having a mind. Does anyone else ever get this?

Totally get the existential bit about meaning. Think being you is not too tricky as your personality is part of your biology genetics and experiences so you could never be in another body.

If you want to read or watch something to blow your mind I recommend Prof Brian Cox’s Wonders of the universe. I had to read this sentence several times ‘All the ingredients required to build the hundreds of billions of galaxies and thousands of trillions of suns were once contained in a volume far smaller than a single atom’

That is mind blowing

Do she know shes a cat and we are humans?

I don't really feel the oddness of being a physical being with legs and a brain so much. I have always understood that I am an animal, like any other animal really.
I get this though:
I also really struggle with staying "present" while doing normal things. It feels to me like my life is a game, and surely everyone else feels the same about their own lives. Because seriously, what are we all doing - are we really just going to the shop and buying things to eat for dinner, so we can get up and drop our kids off to school and go to work? It makes much more sense to think about it as a series of tasks to complete, like in a game with no end goal.
It's why I really struggle with pointless tasks. Like the majority of my job!
I do sometimes find it sad that we are here for such a short time, but I don't think " nothing matters" because we have feelings. Bodies die but love lasts a lot longer than our bodies.

Was it C S Lewis who said something like "Life is but a dream within a dream"

Certainly feels that way.....

Yeah sometimes I’ll be minding my own business and think it’s bizarre how we’ve all those organs and bones and veins and stuff under our skin and it’s just bizarre to imagine sometimes 😂

Sleeping is weird. We’re not really sure why we need to but we’ll likely die if we don’t.

The afterlife 😂

I make sense of it (to myself, at least) by thinking of myself, looking out at the world - then my whole body disappears, but "I" am still there, because my body isn't "me".

I have had a lot of supernatural experiences; it was fascinating to me to find that a "being", call it what you will, that I could neither see nor hear, could actually hear and respond to what I was saying, and read words on a computer screen. It freaked me out a bit, tbh, although I've never come to any harm.

I realise this is an old thread before anyone starts 😉 @UnctuousUnicorns, can you elaborate more on your supernatural experience/s. That sounds wild!

Love “thinking meat”.

I find it helps to think of humans as just another form of animal OP. There’s no purpose except survival and as much enjoyment as we can manage alongside survival.

@minipie, haha, yeah, and another poster who referred to us as "meat bags" and that we're told what to do by "other meat bags". 🤣 Helps to think that when you're stuck in the rat race.

I agree with your point too. Trying to squeeze some enjoyment out of life amongst the surviving!

This adds to my 'WTF' state of mind when I think about being a human.

There are often accusations on MN of threads being written by AI, but this is the first time I’ve thought this one is.

I’m not Ai (at least I don’t think I am…)

This adds to my 'WTF' state of mind when I think about being a human.

4*

@Vegemiteandhoneyontoast this is based on a script written for radio by MIT students back in 1991. I think it is even more hilarious in its original form.

www.mit.edu/people/dpolicar/writing/prose/text/thinkingMeat.html

I've quite often found it weird that other people are people. There's actually a word for it, sonder. Sounds similar to what you're saying. I always thought it was a crazy thing to feel, then I mentioned it to my teenage daughter one day and she goes, "Yeah that's called sonder, duh." 😂 So I guess it's normal!

I’m not Ai (at least I don’t think I am…)

That’s exactly what an AI that’s achieved self awareness would say.

I once experienced sonder at Waterloo Station and the thought of all these hundreds, maybe thousands of people, with their own lives and families and experiences, all in the same place as me at that time, was a bit overwhelming.

A sceptic is someone who thinks extraordinary claims need extraordinary proof. We await such proof for the afterlife, and for aliens.

Aliens may exist somewhere in the universe, but the vastness of time and space, the constraints on the lifespan of carbon-based organisms, and the Theory of Relativity suggest that it is very unlikely that any meetings will take place in the foreseeable future.

YANBU it's absolutely nuts when you think about it. Why is it now? Why are you in this part of your life alive at this time? What tf is happening in space? Wtf us it expanding in to? Wtf happened before the big bang? Is it more crazy to think there was nothing or more crazy to think there was something? How come we can imagine and are aware of our own eventual deaths? Who are we when we are dreaming? Which of our core beliefs are as stupid as thinking the world was flat back in the past... what do we believe that will be rendered ridiculous in the future? Why tf do we think about any of this what's the point? Even the stupidest of humans will occasionally sit there and ponder the nature of existence... why? Why are we so complicated and yet not enough to truly unravel the mysteries of the universe? Awful situation really. Best just to look at some flowers and have a glass of wine and try and forget we are on a haunted ball of rock flying at high speed through the dark void of space but one day to be consumed by a ball of fire bigger than anything we could imagine

I think this ALL the time. I am ND and would LOVE to get in the mind of an NT and see what it's like.

OP I also think this. Often get a sudden pang of god isn't x y z (insert perfectly normal thing) weird. I had one the other day but can't remember what it was about. I'll come back if it comes back to me.

It is all really odd when you think about it.

Gravity blows my mind. We are only stuck to this rock because of it. If it wasn't there, we would just all go floating off into space.

haribosmarties

that just about sums it up!
🤯