I think, therefore, I am…empty? A musing on remembrance.

A gentle summer breeze blows the scent of freshly blooming jasmine and instantly I am transported back in time. Back to a time when I strolled the uneven cobblestone streets of a historic paradise without care for much in the world. At that moment, I feel the warmth, smell the tide, and hear the clopping of a horsedrawn carriage. I was much younger then and much less aware of the nuanced mechanisms that would lay a complex neurological framework upon which I could tap into this experience again 20 years in the future.

Well, that day is today – Yet, I am not in that place anymore. I am somewhere completely different in both mind and body. However, a simple smell quickly takes my brain to a place it has been once before. If blindfolded I could describe for you in nauseating detail the shape and color of the cobblestones, the direction and magnitude of the prevailing breeze, and many more minutia of that unique situation with incredible specificity. But how am I able to do this? How on earth am I able to reproduce such a vivid experience in my brain having only encountered it a single time? Is my brain fooling me? Is this real? Did that really happen?

Switching gears a bit, we find scientists have studied atoms with incredible precision and calculations indicate that approximately 99% of a molecule is empty space – empty space!! How can that be? I’m no fool. I’ve touched the crispness a rock’s edge, I’ve snapped a twig between my two hands, and shoot, I’ve even taken a scalpel to human tissue during a cadaveric dissection. Among all these experiences, not once was I able to perceive the emptiness of space whilst manipulating objects of material substance. No space here…nope, no space for you (insert Seinfeld reference).

Yet, here we are! Forces do exist latent to the human eye. The atom IS made up of mostly empty space. Weak electromagnetic forces of attraction and repulsion that form a sort of bubble, if you will. Stack enough of these “bubbles” together and you form a substance that, to the human naked eye, appears to be solid, or liquid, or some other form of matter that we can touch and interact with. The human brain is one of these forms of matter. The brain is solid – well, it’s more like a squishy solid. It is made up of ~70% water, which is mostly empty space between two hydrogens and an oxygen, fatty lipids, electrolytes, minerals, sugars, and other connective tissues. From an operational standpoint though, neurons are the cellular workhorses of the brain, the cells that actually communicate with the body, interpret messages, and send impulses to other structures – it is the command center. These cells, like all other aforementioned substances, are comprised of lots of different things…but most of all, empty space. 99% to be exact.

But wait, if that is true there must be philosophical implications for our collective understanding on what it means to be human. Right? After all, the human experience is much different than that of a sea cucumber, or a kangaroo, or a turkey vulture. The human experience is a topic for an entirely separate essay. Yet, following this thought experiment, now this means that every thought I’ve ever had, every memory, each experience, and every feeling or emotion I have ever encountered in this life has been a fabrication inside mostly empty space???

That time I felt my body consumed with joy and excitement as the wave gently crumbled over my shoulder and I glided gracefully across the ocean. That time I felt the warmth of our newborn son slowly slip away from my fingertips as I clutched for one last glimpse of his unblemished life. That time I felt the love of a woman so pure and true as she willfully proclaimed her commitment to me forever. That song that brings a tear to my eye each time it is played.

These all happened to me. These are all real. But the staggering reality is these might all be reduced to a simple exchange of electrochemical signals between neuron cells of certain areas of my brain that produce a memory or an experience. Drawing on what we know about atoms and molecules and empty space, it stands to reason, therefore, that my experiences have mostly occurred across a vacuum of empty space that exists in the core of each neuron’s nucleus – nanometers of a nanometer in diameter. There’s nothing in there! How can it be that the most complex and nuanced aspects of humanity exist in a place with there is nothing – NOTHING!

That leads me to the question, perhaps for a future essay, is all of this anything at all? Is our reality anything at all, really? If our experiences, emotions, memories, and our entire existence are etched in a vacuum of empty space between electromagnetic fields, do “we” really exist at all? What questions does this lead you to ask about yourself, your memories, your experiences…and maybe, could memories and experiences exist in the absence of a physical being – say, perhaps, in empty space?

I’ve thought long and hard about this for a while now…turns out, I can’t really remember what I was doing in the first place.

EP