What is reality? Or, what is your reality? The favourite question asked at philosophers kindergarten before nap time. There is enough written about that question and its in my opinion enough to know that what you touch, feel, see and smell is real for you, even if you can’t know that your reality is the same for an other. We know that if people have healthy eyes, that are made after natures specifications, we will interpret the same wavelength of light as red. What we don’t know is what someone sees if they have some kind of defect in their eyes or “process” centre in the brain. So in general we know what most people see as red is the same as we see it but there are exceptions.

Scientifically we understand what light waves are and which molecules are in a specific oder. We humans also react in similar situation, like fear or joy the same, we thus can assume that we experience the same sensations similar. It is off course not so important for our daily lives to wonder about these questions, but what if you try to understand what someone feels or experiences when grief, loss, love, anger or any other emotion or state of mind is involved. There are no light waves or molecules involved in these experiences. We might see where they light up on a brain scan but that tells you little about…what they do to you.

I found an other poem from the past that spoke to me, it is from the 23 of June 2018, Day 822.

Pull

Reality fades

caught by egos gravity

a depressed black hole.

If you try to understand what someone is experiencing who is, for instance, depressed you can only do that by delving in your own experiences. And then you have to assume that we use the same word for the same kind of experiences. People can “feel” depressed but you can also “be” depressed. You feel depressed when you breakup with someone but if your brain forget to mix the right chemicals you can be depressed without any direct influences from the outside world. Are these two comparable? There are also combinations of these two, and they can probably influence each other. We can also use words like down, heavy, somber or dark to describe the feeling of being depressed but these are all subjective to.

We humans have realized that it is difficult to share these feeling in any meaningful way with each other for thousands of years. We talk to friends or a therapist, who can fix us enough so we can go again for a while, but do we really learn something? I think that art comes the closest to give you a feeling that your not the only one with these feelings of depression or loss. You have music, paintings, books, poetry, movies and other art forms that all in their own right can make you feel recognized.

I am to modest to say that I am any good in writing poems, but it is also therapeutically for myself to write about my experiences.

I’ve been depressed, mainly because of brain chemistry that went rogue at a time when things where going fine. The way I perceived the world was that it slowly changed, my “reality faded”. Things that where valuable before suddenly lost that value, so to speak. My reality as in the school I went to and the girlfriend I had where still the same as before but they where no longer recognized as important, they faded to the background in my mind, for no apparent reason to me.

“Caught by egos gravity” You have to look at the picture that belongs to that day to understand why I used these words (its not the picture you see above this post but the one from post Day 822) I can only interpret this line now like: Your ego, or that nagging little red devil on your shoulder, is telling you that its all wrong what you do, he had such high hopes and you slowly start to doubt yourself. The unbalance between the life you live and the life your ambitious ego wants create a “black hole” where time stands still when you get pulled in…because that’s, what you want when your depressed.