If someone asked you who you are, or maybe what you are, chances are you might let them know your occupation!
But what if you really pause and think deeply about those questions. Who or what are you?
You might say that you’re a particular sex, and/or an age i.e. something like “a 26-year-old male”.
Maybe you would say that you were a parent, a spouse, a stamp collector…that all might be factual, but I’m asking you to think more deeply.
What is it that makes you uniquely you?
- Are you the sum of your experiences?
- Are you a collection of memories and emotions?
- Are you a flesh, bone, and blood organism that randomly appeared on Earth?
- Are you a soul inside your mind that pilots around a human body?
- If you are simply your mind and all that really exists that is you is located in your head above your ears, does that mean your toes are not you?
- Are you really completely and totally the thing that looks back at you when you look in the mirror?
- Does what you see in the mirror truly and accurately reflect the you that is inside of you?
If you answered yes to any of the dot point questions above, you may rethink that answer when you consider this scenario, based loosely on the plot of sci-fi novelette ‘Think Like a Dinosaur’ by James Patrick Kelly…
In the future we are able to teleport anywhere we want (similar to what they used to do on Star Trek).
There are ‘Teleporting Services’ that you go to undertake your journey and these service providers will happily transport you to any international destination you choose.
So, you might work in New York but live in Sydney and just get beamed to and from the Big Apple each day.
You walk into a booth, you hear some noises, see a bright flash, the next thing you know you’re at your destination.
One Saturday you wake up and you think to yourself that you’d like to do a spot of shopping in London and head down to your local teleporting station.
You pay the fee, hop into the box, and hear the usual sounds and the familiar bright flash.
When you open your eyes you expect to be in a teleporting station in London.
But when you leave the box you notice that the technician looks exactly the same as the one that checked you in!
She looks up and says, with a worried look on her face, that something seems to have gone wrong in the teleporting process and she needs to check with the London office.
On a video screen, the technician commences a conversation with her London colleague who says that as far as he’s aware everything worked as per normal.
In the background, you can see yourself, happily standing there, excited and ready to commence your shopping expedition.
The other you, the London you, is entirely unaware that anything at all went wrong.
The Sydney technician then turns to you and says that it is company policy that when anything like this goes wrong…well let’s just say they have to “get rid” of one of the transporters in the disintegration box.
So, knowing that there is another you, a person that is an exact you with all your thoughts, feelings, emotions, and memories alive and well in London (and ready to shop), are you willing to sacrifice yourself in the Sydney office?
Chances are, you would not be willing to give up ‘you’ in such a scenario.
So, there is something special/unique/wonderful inside of you isn’t there? It’s this spark, this wonder, this unique being that makes you ‘you’.
It’s also the reason I became a Counsellor.
