Why Are You ‘You’: The Mystery of Your Consciousness
Your Sense of Self is Fragile
Let me ask you something about your consciousness:
Why do you, out of billions, experience your specific reality now?
How is it that you’re reading this now and not anyone else?
I can go and ask you many questions but you got my point already.
Let’s be honest, this is a question we usually dodge. After all, it feels too close, too personal.
Why are you the one thinking, feeling, and experiencing life from behind your eyes instead of someone else?
The sheer weight of that question can make you and me feel uneasy.
Because in asking it, we’re forced to confront something: our sense of self is fragile, maybe even constructed.
Think about this for a second.
Out of billions of people, only *you* have access to your thoughts.
Only you experience this particular moment from your perspective.
It’s like living your own first-person movie while everyone else is playing in the background.
So why has it to be you? Why not your best friend, your neighbor, or a stranger on the other side of the world?
We humans tend to avoid thinking too deeply about this because it shakes the foundation of our self-identity.
It can lead us to self-sabotage and lack of trust in ourselves.
We’re terrified to ask, “What makes me…me?” because we might not like the answer, or worse, there may be no clear answer at all.
This avoidance isn’t just philosophical, it’s evolutionary in my opinion.
If you spent every moment wondering why you’re ‘you’, survival would get pretty difficult.
Think about it.
If your 195th grandfather paused mid-hunt to reflect on his personal consciousness, he’d probably become someone else’s dinner.
So, instead of grappling with these questions, we opt for distractions, routines, and just going with the flow.
But avoiding it doesn’t make the question less significant.
The fragility of our self is real, and confronting it can be unsettling, but also liberating.
Once you acknowledge that you are, in a sense, a unique accident of birth, biology, and circumstance, it allows you to view yourself differently.
It softens the need to cling to an unshakeable identity.
It can make you more adaptable, more open to change, and, ironically, more at peace with yourself.
You’re here, now, out of billions, because of a dizzying set of coincidences.
But do you accept it if I just said so and moved on?
I doubt it.
Thats why, Im going through some of the theories and their practicalities in answering this tough question.
By the end, you’ll have a perspective that might be settling or keeping you on the edge of your seat!
The Broad vs. Hyper-focused Perspective on Consciousness
When you zoom out, the world is vast, billions of people, of experiences, all happening simultaneously.
From that broad universal perspective, you’re just one among many.
It’s easy for you and me to get lost in that scope and feel small, like an extra in a cosmic film too large to comprehend.
But when you zoom back in – into the hyper-focused lens of your own mind – you feel central.
Everything that happens, happens to *you*. Your thoughts, feelings, and experiences dominate.
It’s like standing in the middle of a spotlight, where you’re the only thing truly in focus.
This contrast between the universal and personal is where things get messy for us.
Philosophically, we can talk about collective consciousness, shared experiences, or how each one of us is just a small piece of the whole.
But no matter how much we try to understand ourselves from that broad external view, we’re trapped inside our own heads.
You live in your own body, feel your own emotions, and see life through the narrow window of your perspective.
It’s like trying to understand a forest while being stuck inside one tree.
Consider this:
When you look at the night sky, you know intellectually that you’re just one person on one planet among an infinite universe of stars.
But that doesn’t change how it *feels* when you experience something personally, like joy, pain, or fear.
For example, the whole world could be burning, but if you stub your toe in that moment, the pain is all-consuming.
The rest of the universe just fades away.
This is why philosophical explanations for consciousness often hit a wall.
We can theorize all day about the nature of experience, but philosophy struggles with personal consciousness because it’s so deeply *subjective*.
It’s like trying to explain what chocolate tastes like to someone who’s never tasted it.
No matter how logical or well-reasoned the explanation, there’s a gap.
A barrier that can’t quite be crossed, because personal experience is something you *feel*, not something you can fully intellectualize.
Philosophers call this the “problem of other minds”.
You can never really know what it’s like to be someone else.
You can empathize, you can try to understand, but you’re still stuck with your own experience.
Even when you try to imagine the broad collective human experience, your consciousness snaps back to the hyper-focused view: the world as you experience it.
It’s a tension that never really goes away.
As a result, you’ll end up with a weird reality:
- You live your life caught between the knowledge that you’re just one small part of a much larger whole,
- and the feeling that your consciousness is the center of everything.
And no matter how hard you try to escape that perspective, it pulls you back.
The limits of philosophy here are clear:
it can help you *think* about consciousness, but it can’t help you fully understand why you experience the world the way you do.
So, maybe the goal isn’t to escape that hyper-focused view.
Maybe the answer is to learn to balance both perspectives.
To understand that while your consciousness feels like the center of the universe, in the grand scheme of things, you’re part of something much larger.
And in that balance, there’s a kind of peace.
You can hold onto the beauty and strangeness of being *you*, without losing sight of the fact that, in the broadest sense, we’re all in this together.
This takes me to the other section.
The Centrality of Your Experience
It’s a strange thought, isn’t it?
The idea here is that *your* experience could be the only one that’s truly real, while everyone else is just part of it.
This theory, known as egocentric presentism, suggests that your personal consciousness is the only reality that truly exists.
Everyone else’s experience, your friends, family, the people on the street, is secondary.
Its like they’re in a parallel universe to your own inner world.
This theory isn’t new.
Philosophers have debated for centuries why your personal perspective feels so uniquely real among all possible viewpoints.
Why does it feel like you’re the one steering the ship while others are just passengers, playing their roles around you?
Egocentric presentism flips our usual way of thinking upside down.
Instead of assuming we’re all on equal footing in terms of our experience, it suggests that only *your* experience carries weight.
That means everything else exists only as it relates to *you*.
Of course, this sounds self-centered, but in a way, isn’t that how it feels most of the time?
I mean, everything that happens in life ultimately filters through your personal lens.
But here’s where things get interesting.
Some of us turn to meditation or self-awareness practices in hopes of breaking through this feeling we have.
If we can clear our mind, transcend the ego, or connect with something bigger, maybe we can experience a more universal consciousness.
But often, meditation doesn’t quite work as planned. Why?
I get that meditation promises a lot.
It’s supposed to bring clarity and make you feel more connected to the world around you.
But in practice, it doesn’t always solve the deep, nagging question of “Why me?”
Sure, meditation can calm your mind, offer a sense of peace, or give you a fleeting feeling of oneness with the universe.
But when the session ends, you still return to *your* life, *your* thoughts, and *your* body.
It’s like meditation can show you the vast ocean, but you’re still swimming in your own small pond.
The truth is, no matter how deep you go into self-awareness, you’re still aware of the same thing: *yourself*.
You might temporarily quiet the noise of your thoughts, but the core question, why *you* are the one having this experience, remains unanswered.
One reason meditation doesn’t fully resolve this is because self-awareness is still tied to your own consciousness.
in other words:
when you try to be mindful, you’re still the one observing.
You’re still the center of your experience.
And here’s the kicker: the more you try to dissolve the self, the more it can highlight just how central your experience is.
You might feel a deep connection to the universe for a moment, but sooner or later, the “Why me?” question creeps back in.
It’s a question that’s hard-wired into our experience of reality.
It’s unsettling, yes, but it’s also what makes consciousness so deeply personal and unique.
So in my opinion, no amount of meditation or self-awareness can fully shake the feeling that your experience is the real one.
The very act of observing your thoughts or practicing mindfulness draws attention back to you.
This reinforces that you’re the one having this moment, right now.
That’s the paradox: you may touch moments of deeper awareness, but the question of “Why me?” is likely to remain lurking at the edge of your consciousness.
In other words, its as if it is waiting for you to sit with it, even if you can never fully answer it.
Open Individualism With A Shared Consciousness Theory
Now this one is an interesting theory that aims to answer ‘why me’.
Imagine this: consciousness is like a vast ocean, and our experience is just a wave breaking the surface.
In other words, we all feel like separate entities.
But what if that’s an illusion?
What if we’re all part of the same universal consciousness, and our individual lives are just temporary ripples in that vast sea?
This is what the open individualism suggests.
Instead of being isolated entities, we could be one consciousness experiencing life through countless perspectives.
It’s a radical thought, but not a new one.
Many spiritual traditions like Buddhism to branches of Hinduism have long held this view.
They all suggest that we’re all connected, that our separateness is a trick of our senses.
From this perspective, you’re not just *you*, you’re a part of something greater, looking out at the world from your particular window.
Here’s another way of thinking about it.
Think of life like a mansion with countless windows.
From each window, the view is different, but the mansion is the same.
You might be standing at one window, I’m at another, but we’re both peering out from the same structure.
Now, think about what this means for your personal experience.
That sense of uniqueness that *you* are different, separate, special, is challenged by this idea.
It’s not that you’re unimportant; it’s that your individuality is a temporary state.
You’re a window on the mansion of consciousness, and so is everyone else.
The broader consciousness is simply seeing the world through different eyes, different lives.
It’s comforting in a way, but also a little unsettling.
If we’re all the same consciousness, then where do *you* begin, and where does *someone else* end?
Here’s where things get even more interesting.
Neuroscience is starting to suggest that our sense of being an individual self – our separateness from others – is largely a construct created by our brain.
Your brain, like mine, is a master illusionist, and one of its greatest tricks is convincing you that *you* are separate and that your consciousness is unique.
But what if this is just a useful fiction?
The brain needs you to feel unique so you can navigate the world, survive, and make decisions.
If you didn’t feel distinct, you’d struggle to function in everyday life.
After all, it would be hard to take care of your needs if you saw yourself as just one tiny piece of a larger, shared consciousness.
Think about dreams for a second.
When you’re in a dream, you don’t question it, you’re fully absorbed.
You believe the world in the dream is real and that you are *you* within it.
But when you wake up, you realize it was all in your head, just a fleeting experience.
What if waking life is similar?
What if the brain is tricking you into feeling separate, just like a dream tricks you into believing its narrative?
Your sense of individuality might be necessary for survival, but it could also be a temporary illusion.
And that’s the crux of the idea.
It’s a humbling thought, isn’t it?
What feels like the most real solid part of you, your individuality, might actually be the brain’s way of keeping you functional.
It makes you wonder:
If this sense of my self is just an illusion, what lies behind it?
Maybe, just maybe, the real you is far more expansive than you’ve ever imagined.
If that’s true, then perhaps the question isn’t “Who am I?” but rather “Who are *we*?”
So Why You And Not Someone Else?
I think we established one thing by now.
The more you dig into the question of who you are, the more slippery the answer becomes.
In general, we tend to think of ourselves as a collection of our thoughts, memories, and experiences.
But the deeper you go, the more those definitions start to fall apart.
Are you your job? Your relationships? Your dreams?
If you strip all that away, what’s left?
Defining the self just feels like trying to grasp water. The tighter you hold on, the more it slips through your fingers.
At first, it might seem straightforward: you are the person who thinks your thoughts.
But then, if you really pay attention, you realize you aren’t *thinking* your thoughts, they arise on their own, without your control.
You’re more like the observer, the awareness behind those thoughts, watching them come and go.
This brings us to a profound realization: you may not be your thoughts at all.
You may just be the awareness that witnesses them. It’s disturbing, right?
We spend our lives thinking we are the sum of our beliefs and emotions, only to find that we’re something deeper, more intangible.
This awareness, this quiet observer, is the closest we can get to defining “the self,” and even that doesn’t fully capture it.
Sadly thats how it really is without assigning anything to it.
This uncertainty is uncomfortable, no doubt.
Not knowing the true reason for your unique consciousness, the “why me” question, is one of life’s greatest puzzles.
You might feel a deep pull to solve it, but the truth is, the more you chase it, the more elusive it becomes.
And maybe that’s okay.
Instead of running from the discomfort, what if you embraced it?
The fact that we can’t definitively and evidently answer why you are ‘you’ and all of your experiences but no one else might actually be freeing.
It opens the door to living with a kind of awe, accepting that some things are beyond our understanding.
This mystery gives life its depth.
Imagine how mundane life would feel if we had a neat, packaged answer to everything!
That’s one reason why science evolved to what it is today.
Its because of science and questioning the norm that we have been able to smash old thoughts and ideologies.
Now, this takes me to the final section of this post, religion’s influence on this question in hand.
Typically, when we are faced with such big unanswerable questions, some of us often turn to religion for answers.
Invoking God, or a higher power, can feel like a comforting answer for us to the mystery of consciousness.
Religion offers a narrative:
you are *you* because a divine being created you this way, with purpose, with intent.
It’s a tidy solution that gives some of us peace, a sense of meaning, and an anchor in the sea of existential uncertainty.
But while this might be comforting on the surface, it also has its dangers in my eyes.
Relying too much on religion to answer these deep personal questions can shut down curiosity and exploration.
Instead of wrestling with the discomfort of the unknown, religion can sometimes encourage people to stop asking questions altogether.
In other words, to believe a certain narrative as the ultimate truth.
If “God made me this way” becomes the final answer, it might keep us from discovering deeper truths about the world and our minds.
Especially when so many things that were taught by religion as universal truths have long been demolished thanks to more valuable evidence.
Worse still, invoking God as the ultimate reason behind consciousness can sometimes lead to harmful dogmas.
History is filled with examples where religious beliefs about the self and soul became rigid.
This has lead to intolerance or persecution of those of us who didn’t align with that particular narrative.
There’s value in not knowing, in leaving space for doubt, exploration.
Thats how we evolved from old paganistic rituals and religious dogmatism to more structured and advanced societies.
In the end, defining yourself is a lifelong journey, not a destination.
You may never know why you are ‘you’, and that’s okay.
So after all of this, you might end up in one of the following 3 camps:
You may choose to accept certain theories to make sense of this question.
Or, you might leverage religions as the answer.
Or you come to accept that uncertainty, the mystery, is part of the experience.
So “Who am I”?
Well, I guess you could say I’m the sum of all my parts, but I’m still trying to work out the math.
Whether through religion, philosophy, or simply the act of living, the search for the self is what makes life rich.
And to me, you don’t need a final answer to appreciate the wonder of it all.
Thanks for reading!
What do you think of this post? Any ideas you agree or disagree with?
Leave your comment below 🙂
Thanks.
