For the last few weeks, I’ve been following a trail of increasingly strange questions.
It started with a fly inside a computer.
Then it led to information.
Then hidden layers beneath reality itself.
But somewhere along the way, I realised I had skipped the strangest question of all.
Not:
“What is reality?”
But:
“Who exactly is experiencing it?”
Here’s A Strange Question
What if the person you think you are...
Isn’t actually you?
I don’t mean your name.
Or your job.
Or your personality.
I mean the thing looking through your eyes right now.
The thing having the experience.
Because for the last few rabbit holes we’ve been exploring reality.
We started with a fly trapped inside a computer.
Then we asked whether information might be more important than the thing carrying it.
Then we wondered whether reality itself might have hidden layers underneath it.
But after all of that, I realised we’d ignored the strangest question of all.
Not:
“What is reality?”
But:
“Who exactly is experiencing it?”
The Problem With “Me”
Right now, you’re looking out through a pair of eyes.
You’re hearing sounds.
Feeling things.
Thoughts are arriving whether you asked for them or not.
And it all feels so ordinary that almost nobody stops to question it.
So let me question it.
If I asked you who’s looking through your eyes right now, you’d answer in about half a second.
“Me.”
Fine.
But what is that, exactly?
Because the longer you stare at it, the weirder it gets.
Start with the obvious answer.
Your body.
You look in the mirror.
You see a face.
You point and say:
“That’s me.”
Except your body won’t sit still.
Cells die.
Cells get replaced.
The body you’re walking around in today isn’t the same one you had ten years ago.
And yet somehow you still feel like the same person.
Same you.
Different hardware.
So maybe you’re not the body.
Then Maybe You’re Your Thoughts
Except thoughts are strange too.
You don’t choose most of them.
They simply appear.
A memory.
A worry.
Some random thing from years ago.
There one second.
Gone the next.
And if thoughts come and go like weather...
How can they be you?
Then maybe you’re your memories.
Except memories disappear too.
People forget.
People lose entire chapters of their lives.
And even then, there still seems to be someone home.
Which leaves us with a problem.
If you’re not the body...
And you’re not the thoughts...
And you’re not the memories...
Then what exactly is left holding the whole thing together?
Lara Croft And The Invisible Player
This is the point where, for some reason, I started thinking about Lara Croft.
Stay with me.
Picture Lara standing at a crossroads.
Left.
Or right.
She chooses left.
A few seconds later she falls into a trap and dies.
Game over.
The screen goes black.
Then the game reloads.
And there she is again.
Standing at the same crossroads.
Left.
Or right.
From Lara’s perspective, nothing happened.
She doesn’t remember the trap.
She doesn’t remember dying.
She doesn’t remember making the wrong choice.
But the player remembers.
The player already knows what’s waiting down the left path.
So this time...
Right.
And she survives.
Here’s the part I can’t stop thinking about.
From Lara’s perspective, the choice feels different.
She doesn’t know why.
But the player does.
Which makes me wonder:
How many decisions do we make because of information we can’t consciously access?
How much of what we call intuition is actually knowledge without memory?
Lara Experiences The World. The Player Experiences Lara.
Now obviously Lara isn’t real.
That’s not the interesting part.
The interesting part is that Lara and the player aren’t the same thing.
Lara experiences the world.
The player experiences Lara experiencing the world.
Connected.
But not identical.
And that opens up a question I can’t quite shake.
What if we’ve been assuming we’re Lara this whole time?
What if we’ve mistaken the character for the player?
And before anyone runs off with this idea...
I’m not claiming souls exist.
I’m not claiming reincarnation exists.
I’m not saying we’re trapped inside a video game.
I’m doing the same thing I’ve done throughout this series.
I’m just asking the question.
The Problem Of Being Inside The System
If Lara somehow woke up, she’d probably spend her entire existence studying her world.
Its physics.
Its rules.
Its dangers.
Its mysteries.
But would any amount of understanding ever prove a player existed?
Or would the player remain permanently invisible?
Maybe the limitation was never intelligence.
Maybe it was perspective.
A fish doesn’t discover the ocean because it’s already inside it.
And sometimes I wonder if we’re making the same mistake.
Maybe the hardest things to see aren’t hidden.
Maybe they’re the things we’ve been surrounded by our entire lives.
The things that feel so normal we never think to question them.
The Copy Problem
Imagine scientists build a perfect copy of you.
Not a clone.
A perfect copy.
Every memory.
Every fear.
Every dream.
Every embarrassing moment you’ve ever tried to forget.
The copy opens its eyes and says:
“I’m me.”
And from its perspective, it isn’t lying.
Now there are two of you.
Both have the same memories.
Both believe they’re the original.
Both are clearly having an experience.
So where is the real you?
And if you can’t point to it...
Then what exactly have you been calling “you” all this time?
The Dream Question
Think about last night’s dream.
While you were inside it, it felt real.
You had no idea it was a dream.
Then you woke up.
Now imagine waking up again.
And discovering this reality was the dream.
How would you know?
Seriously.
What test would you run?
What evidence would convince you?
Because every person in every possible reality probably assumes they’re already awake.
The Real Rabbit Hole
Maybe the strangest possibility isn’t that reality is a simulation.
Maybe it’s that you’ve mistaken yourself for the character.
The way Lara mistakes herself for Lara.
The way the fly mistakes itself for a fly.
Because if there is a player...
The character never meets them.
The character only ever gets the game.
And that points somewhere uncomfortable.
Maybe the thing looking through your eyes right now isn’t the person you think you are.
Maybe the person you think you are is simply what the player happens to be playing.
The Mystery That Refuses To Go Away
People have spent thousands of years attacking this question.
Philosophers.
Scientists.
Mystics.
Whole religions.
And after every answer we’ve ever invented...
The mystery is still sitting there.
Because maybe the deepest question was never about reality.
Or information.
Or hidden layers.
Or consciousness.
Maybe the deepest mystery is simply that something is here at all.
Right now.
Having an experience.
Watching.
Listening.
Questioning.
Wondering.
So Who Is Looking Through Your Eyes?
The fly.
Information.
Reality.
Hidden layers.
Players.
Consciousness.
Fine.
But after all of that...
What exactly is the thing looking through your eyes right now?
Because if Lara ever woke up, she might spend her whole life trying to decode her world.
Every rule.
Every danger.
Every mystery.
And none of it would tell her who was holding the controller.
She’d spend her entire existence staring outward...
While the real mystery sat one level above her the whole time.
Maybe we’re doing the same thing.
Maybe we’re searching for answers out there...
When the biggest question has been here all along.
And if one day you discovered the answer...
Would you even recognise it?
Discussion Question
What do you think “you” actually are?
Your body?
Your thoughts?
Your memories?
Your consciousness?
Or something else entirely?
I’m curious where people land on this one.