Thought Experiment: Would You Rather Have Experienced None of This?

“Try to imagine what it will be like to go to sleep and never wake up… now try to imagine what it was like to wake up having never gone to sleep.”

The above quote from Alan Watts (superb human) describes a deliberate mental exercise. Watts thought that contemplating these scenarios—of moving from existence to non-existence or vice versa—was a kind of yoga that could drive one toward the understanding that one does not begin existing or cease to exist. That is, that one is not separate from the universe, but is, in fact, one with something eternal that has always existed and will forevermore. You = cosmos = belly button lint… or something.

I like this idea of pondering particular scenarios or questions as a means of arriving at certain realizations. A while ago, I suggested that ruminating on how you would live if you were anonymous could provide insight into your motivations and deeper desires.

Claustrophobia by Nina Valetova, 2003. Photo Credit: Wiki Commons

Experience: All or Nothing

I have a similar thought experiment that I think can broaden our perspective on the inevitable grimace-inducing aspects of existence and deepen our appreciation for what life can offer (namely, cookies).

Consider this ostensibly simple and trivial question:

Would you rather have experienced none of this?

By this I mean something straightforward: Would you rather have never existed? Would you rather have never known what it is to be startled or melancholy or joyful or pensive or excited or frightened or content or lonely or ecstatic or hungover? Would you rather have never felt what it is to hear ocean waves crashing against the shore, or to watch Saturday morning cartoons, or to lose yourself in a moving song, or to order a greasy breakfast burrito at 3am, or to gaze upon the stars, or to play with an exuberant puppy, or to love people deeply and know that they reciprocate that love?

For me and probably (hopefully) most of you, the intuitive answer to this question is a definitive no, of course not. Of course we want to experience things. It seems so obvious as to be banal, but perhaps there’s something a bit more significant here.

Try to imagine what it would be to never have existed. It’s virtually impossible, a sort of paradox—to try to think of what it would be to have never thought, or to sense what it would be to have never sensed anything. All we know is life, so we can hardly graze this ground with our rational minds.

But humor me: consider how many (theoretically possible) people never experienced a thing. What of the trillions of people who could’ve been born if particular sperm and eggs hadn’t combined in such a precise way as to produce this current set of humans? Or the billions who could have lived if our ancestors had reproduced in slightly different arrangements (say Lucy got with Blaine instead of Gunther)? For these theoretical non-existent persons—no colors, no sounds, no bodies, no thoughts, nada. Not that they have any idea what they’re missing out on, but I digress.

What I’m aiming to convey is that countless minute events across vast seas of time have coalesced against astronomical odds to allow you to watch Pawn Stars give rise to the biological phenomenon that is you (let’s not even begin to discuss the conditions required for life to emerge in the first place). From this vantage point, it seems clear that it would have taken little more than a cosmic shrug of the shoulders for you or I to have instead remained merely a possibility.

And as I’ve hypothesized, when we weigh existence vs. non-existence, most of us will quickly admit that we do not envy those theoretical persons. We would rather have our bodies, ourselves, our being.

I Would Choose Life, Man

Experience can be overbearing and strange and unnecessarily fraught with struggle, but ultimately, am I glad I am able to see and hear and feel and think in this ridiculous world? Yes, I am.

Given the choice, I would prefer to undergo all of this, even the heartbreak, the anxiety, the guilt, the depression. Each of these adds breadth and poignancy to the spectrum of experience, and each is in some way essential to what it is to be a human.

That I would choose to live—would choose to accept all this—is an existence-affirmation of tremendous significance. It is akin to Nietzsche’s idea of a ‘sacred “Yes,”‘ or his related idea of amor fati: the love of one’s fate. Experience alone—just to live it—becomes a purpose, an end in itself, rather than a means to something transcendent or otherworldly. To go places and do things and meet people and wonder about it all and just be—that is enough. 

So in those times when I am morose, discombobulated, or frazzled, I try to remain in touch with this truth: that on the most fundamental level, I have what I would choose. I have life, I have experience. When I’m aware of this, the slog of unavoidable monotony and tribulation becomes more palatable, and it is possible for gratitude to arise, not directed at any particular entity, but as an amorphous resonance of this colossal All that I am thankful to know.

This world, this life, is countless things both lovely and ghastly. It is peculiar and it is often heavy, but it is ours. It is yours and mine. And I would choose it.

“The meaning of life is just to be alive. It is so plain and so obvious and so simple. And yet, everybody rushes around in a great panic as if it were necessary to achieve something beyond themselves.”
— Alan Watts

“I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who makes things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche

If this was cool, follow me on Twitter or subscribe via email or RSS.