The Individual
What if I swapped lives with you, Freaky Friday style. You’d live my life. I’d live yours. How would I even begin to understand your life after jumping into it? I’ve always liked thinking about what other people’s lives must be like. Not in the sort of way where I wonder how it would be like to have your job, have your family, or have your friends as you may think typically think of a body switch, but instead how do you even experience life. What if I could put my mind over yours. You would still be the exact same, unknowing of my co-habitance, but I would essentially live your life.
I would feel what you feel. The balance of your body, the weight of your stride; what would that be like? Would the light reflect against water exactly the way I see it? There are people who cannot distinguish colors, but how do we even know that what we see is universal. Would the world look strange from my channeling of your senses, seeing shades of colors I had never known could exist? How about the texture of the walls, the feeling of wind against the face, what do people other than myself experience in their lives?
And what about your mind. How do you think? Is it the stream of consciousness that is familiar to myself or is it an entirely different web of conscious thought, one I could not even fathom to entangle even if I had years. What do you see as happiness, sadness, fear, love, and hate. Do you feel the same wave of pleasure when that certain song hits its climax, do you feel the withdrawn emptiness when you are swept with sadness.
How is anybody able to really judge a person when we don’t know the first thing about them? Living an entire life in our own perspectives, of course we believe that we may understand one another when we connect with language and emotion, but who isn’t to say we may entirely be strangers to one another. You and I are nothing alike, and we most likely will never understand why.
