Going Boldly

Going Boldly
Photo posted to flickr by WilWheaton

Seconds before this photo was taken, I typed my fingers across the Okudagram, using the same series of commands that I made up to send the ship to warp speed.

~ Wil Wheaton

One of the blogs I read regularly is Wil Wheaton's WWdN: In Exile. If you've not already discovered this for yourself, he's one of the coolest dudes in the pantheon of Geeks, period. Seriously.

He recently posted this spiffy shot on his flickr page (and his blog) taken of himself at Start Trek The Tour. (Click on the image to see it on his flickr page and read the rest of his comments about it.)

Not only is it a nifty photo, but flickr member tlong commented on it, pointing out:

I just love the concept of pretending to be yourself.
I'm going to try it today in my cubicle at work.

My brain stopped for a second, rewound a bit, and processed that idea a bit more slowly than the rest of the stuff that floats past during the course of a quick browse through flickr.

I absolutely love the idea.

It's obvious how you could pretend to be yourself in the past, by reliving a moment from your youth.

But how would you go about pretending to be your current self, as tlong suggested?

And to add another layer of overthinking this... aren't most of us busy each day pretending to be someone we're not? So what happens if we stop the one, and begin the other? What would we reveal?

Every morning, I put it on
I walk outside, and I am gone
And I don’t seem to mind anymore
I can’t think what it was like before I wore it all the time

In the evening, I take it off
But there’s another one underneath
And I can’t seem to find the bottom of the stack

~Persona, The Blue Man Group

* * *

"A human being is a part of the whole, called by us, "Universe," a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest -- a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness.

This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole of nature in its beauty."

~Albert Einstein

* * *

Among Buddhist schools there is consensus on the point that "self" or "I" must be understood in terms of the aggregation of body and mind. But as to what, exactly, we are referring when we say "I" or "self," there has been divergence of opinion even among Buddhist thinkers. Many Buddhist schools maintain that in the final analysis we must identify the "self" with the consciousness of the person. Through analysis, we can show how our body is a kind of contingent fact and that what continues across time is really a being's consciousness.

~ From verse one of Eight Verses of Training the Mind, by His Holiness the Dalai Lama