The only times I ever really doubt my sanity is when I'm on the verge of sleep. It's been a pretty common phenomenon for me to experience Hypnogogic hallucinations when I am falling asleep, and in the past year, they've increased in frequency.
Because of this, I tend to hear and "see" things that aren't there quite often. (I say "see" because my eyes are always closed, but I visualize them so vividly sometimes that I'm surprised when I have to open my eyes when I wake up.) For instance, I had a few hallucinations at work once, and I thought that inmates were escaping and creeping up on me to attack me. Then I woke up and realized I was hearing the clock ticking above me and it altered my perception.
Well, lately, I've been feeling things as I'm going to bed for the night, or getting up for the day. Yesterday morning I thought I spilled a jar of peanut butter on my shirt, and I was concerned with how to clean it off and if I could salvage any of it. I could really feel it on me though, that greasy peanut texture. I could smell and taste it. I woke up and realized I was just lying in bed. Then I started falling asleep and started hallucinating about peeing in the toilet and I woke up, afraid I might wet the bed (I didn't, by the way. Never once wet the bed, somehow.). Then I hallucinated again about holding an apple in my hand. All just as vivid as the last.
I rarely remember my hallucinations, but the past couple of days have been so frequent and disturbing that I've started wondering where the line is drawn between my conscious recollections and my unconscious wanderings. Again. I wondered a few months ago while I was dealing with the irritability associated with excessive sleepiness. You know, who am I if I am two different people depending on how tired I am.
The brain functions on many levels, and there are many levels that coexist psychologically as well. I'm wondering who I am at the core, beyond the irritable and lazy instinctual side of me, and beneath the complicated but confident exterior that functions from day to day.
Or do we even have a steady core at all? I'm reminded of the one and only book on cognitive psychology that I've ever read, "The Mind's I" that talks about such topics. Do we have a core that's just clouded by our minds, or are we the sum of our many layers?
Am I a brain? or, do I have a brain? If I were a book, would I be any single page? Any single explicit theme? Would I be the cover? Or would I be a chapter? Or a whole book?
Am I an eyeball? A brainstem? A collection of organs? A torso? A machine? A cluster of nerve endings?
It's all gray area for me right now. There is nothing solid to hold on to, yet at the same time, this nagging voice inside says it knows exactly who it is. This voice describes me more like a powerful computer, that just happens to have an old analogue monitor that takes a few minutes to warm up. Before it gets warmed up, it can only display a few colors, but once it's primed and ready to go, it has a great resolution and contrast ratio.
Did I just turn into a total nerd?
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3 comments:
I don't think thinking about who you are makes you a nerd. But maybe that just makes me a nerd, too. :)
I tend to think of people as multi-layered -- you might even say, "richly layered." We all have different facets that comprise who we are, and no facet is less valid than any other. The good, the bad, and the ugly!
I recently read a very interesting book that touches on some of what you're asking. It's called "Stroke of Insight" by Jill Bolte Taylor. It's by a brain scientist who suffered a stroke that debilitated her left brain. She had to relearn how to walk and talk and read and - all of it, with her right brain now as the predominant part of her personality. It talks about how much she changed, and how it was mostly for the better. I've found her "step to the right" technique very useful as a means of getting out of my typical thought patterns and finding new perspective on who I am and how I function in the world.
And yes, I think you're a little nerdy, but that's way cool.
Stroke of Insight... I'll check it out. I like books like that. But for now, Rachel is enticing me with the season finale of Buffy Season 4. Thanks for the comment. It was very insightful and interesting. ^_^
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