Something, Someone, Simulation

If I follow the notion that we live in a simulation, which I often do these days then it would be obvious and expected that I am in control of my fate. Perhaps that’s contradictory because fate has no place in a simulation I suppose. Nonetheless it would be ideal that my actions would ultimately lead to favorable outcomes however I’m still trying to work that part out. 

What interests me isn’t whether we’re living in a simulation. It’s why I want it to be true. If nothing else, it exposes a contradiction in me: I desperately want freedom, but I also want a script. I want complete control over my choices while secretly hoping someone—or something—already knows how the story ends. I want to improvise and follow directions at the same time.

In the simulation, everyone and everything is a reflection of you. For me, I feel like I’m in a county fair hall of mirrors where everything looks familiar but is distorted and warped. I can make out the faces but the names escape me; something like a dream you forget seconds after waking up yet somehow you remember days later. If my universe is programmed then surely my efforts should be rewarded and suffering should eventually reveal its purpose. 

I test this with people although I probably shouldn’t. I’m on a fourth floor balcony, I’m smoking a cigarette with tall, dark and handsome. It’s been a long night albeit a fun one. I take a drag, I peer over the ledge and before I know it the words escape me: if I jumped, do you think I would die? I’m asking Simulation directly. He pauses and realizes my question actually warrants an answer. Yes I think so, or at the very least you would be paralyzed and I don’t think you’d be a pleasant paraplegic. 

Gravity never misses its cue and neither does the simulation. So. Why do I need it? It feels like a map, in the way that both don’t guarantee I’ll end up anywhere meaningful or even pleasant but at least both let me know where I am. These questions of death and mortality appear when reality begins to feel too thin around the edges. I could thank God that they are merely fleeting musings these days but he has no place in a simulation. I thank myself. 

I find comfort in entertaining this idea that I’m living in a simulation. That I know the architect behind every wrong turn, missed flight or failed relationship. It’s scarier to think that there is an unseen force responsible for all of these things pleasurable or not. But if there is any lesson hidden in the code, I suspect it is this: meaning is not something waiting to be discovered. It is something we author ourselves.

So whether this is a simulation, a divine plan, or a series of accidents stitched together by memory, I find myself arriving at the same conclusion. I am both the player and the witness. The architect and the audience. The map and the person trying to read it.

For now, that is enough.