Micah Zarin's Blog

Occasionally, I become aware that I am aware, and it ruins my whole afternoon.

This is, I believe, the central tragedy of consciousness: not that we die, or suffer, or pay taxes, but that we know we’re doing it. The worm does not reflect. The dog does not spiral. The rock does not wonder, mid-tumble, if it’s been living inauthentically. Only humans look out the window on a Tuesday and think: oh god, again? And the only reason we do this is because we can. That’s what consciousness is—a gift, in the same way that a cursed amulet in a Greek tragedy is technically a gift. Someone hands it to you and says “this will grant you self-awareness,” and then you never sleep again.

I am, regrettably, conscious. I know this because I have thoughts like “what if my thoughts aren’t mine” and “what if my red is your blue, and your blue is my red?” These are not useful thoughts. They do not help with algebra. They do not get me invited to parties. But they do seem to be intrinsic to being a mind. A mind, I should clarify, is not the same thing as a brain. A brain is an organ. A squishy pink command center. You can hold a brain in your hands. You cannot hold a mind. You cannot point to it, or cut it open, or touch it without becoming irreversibly poetic. And yet it touches everything back. It is the feeling of being in there, inside your own skull, looking out like someone peeking through the curtains of a burning house.

The strangest thing is how normal it feels. You wake up, you remember your name, you identify as a person. You think this is obvious. You do not scream. You do not ask “why am I here?” every time you open your eyes. But maybe you should. Because you’re not just alive. You know you’re alive. And somehow, you’re okay with this. You go to brunch. You post a photo. You forget that you are a walking hallucination strapped to a meat puppet made of carbon and hormones and spite.

Some argue that consciousness is an emergent property: if you stick enough neurons together and give them Wi-Fi, eventually they start doing philosophy. Others argue that it is fundamental to the universe—that the cosmos itself is aware, and we are just its little experiments in ego. Either way, it is completely unhelpful. We are still stuck here. We are still asking questions with no obvious answers, like “what is a self?” and “am I real?” and “did I actually make that joke, or was it the trauma talking?”

And, by the way, the self is complete fiction. This is not to say it isn’t useful. Fiction often is. But it is a fiction nonetheless—a story told by your brain to explain why your body keeps moving. You are not one thing. You are many. A collection of habits, instincts, memories, unresolved texts, and moments of clarity that last roughly the length of a TED Talk. You are a moodboard. A shifting consensus. An unreliable narrator with a God complex and a Spotify Wrapped. And yet, somehow, you persist. You sign your name. You recognize your reflection. You form opinions about Taylor Swift albums. You believe in your own continuity.

Some people say consciousness is a miracle. This is usually said by people who meditate and have very good lighting in their apartments. But there’s truth in it. There is no compelling reason you should be you. The odds are against it. You could’ve been a sea cucumber. You could’ve been nothing. And instead, you get this: the relentless ticker tape of thought, the anxiety of identity, the constant, gentle pressure of being a person. Congratulations.

If this sounds dramatic, it’s because it is. Consciousness is drama. It is the theater of the mind, performed to an audience of one, with no intermission and no script. You are the star, the director, and the guy backstage having a breakdown because someone moved the prop table. And the play keeps going. Every moment, you improvise your role. You try to act like a coherent character. You hope no one notices you don’t really know your lines. And at the end, if there is an end, you bow.

So what is consciousness? It is the strange condition of knowing that you exist, and not knowing what to do with that knowledge. It is the background hum of “me,” the echo of selfhood in an otherwise indifferent universe. It is, above all, unreasonable. No evolutionary algorithm required you to start wondering about your place in the cosmos. No survival instinct benefits from writing essays about awareness. And yet, here you are, reading this paragraph and thinking: “Yes, exactly!” Or: “This guy needs therapy.” Both are valid. Either way, you are conscious. And that, in itself, is unreasonably, absurdly, profoundly something.