Infinity and Paradox

Memory isn’t a dusty filing cabinet where events just sit untouched. Every time you remember something, your mind tweaks it a little — mixing in how you feel now, what you’ve learned since, and what seems to make sense. So the “you” telling your life story is a bit of an unreliable narrator.

We walk around assuming we see things as they really are. We kind of have to — otherwise we couldn’t make decisions. But the brain isn’t built to be perfectly accurate; it’s built to keep things coherent. It stitches together bits of sensory input into a story that feels smooth and logical, even if that means filling in gaps with guesses.

That’s why true objectivity is basically out of reach. What we call “facts” are often just hardened interpretations. Put two people in the same situation and they’ll come away with different versions of what happened — and both will be convinced they’re right.

So if you want to understand what it means to be human, it helps to realize that the voice in your head isn’t a news reporter. It’s a storyteller. It’s always looking for meaning, not just raw information. The moment you accept that your own perception can be wrong is when you actually start to see more clearly. We don’t look at the world directly — we look through a lens that bends the light first.

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