Different Worlds

It’s strange being an emergent phenomenon. Millions of years ago, the 60 trillion cells that comprise me would have each been independent organisms, ruthlessly competing with each other. Today, they form an entity that may be the most complex thing in the universe. There is nothing in any one of them that describes me, but they comprise me wholly. From this alliance, a human appears.

I feel no connection to them, even though they are all I am. I don’t mind losing them when my blood spills from a cut. Nor do I mourn when one chooses to die, sacrificing itself for the greater good of the others (that greater good is, by definition, me). I sometimes feel awe for their general existence, representing an astronomically unlikely streak of survival through wildly different environments, stretching directly back to the very first life itself. But mostly I don’t think of them at all.

They came together because I can know things about the world that they cannot. That knowledge makes me care about things that are not only unknowable to them, but sometimes completely divergent to their interests. If they could, would they be confused by my internal debates about having children, the only thing they care about? Would they be bewildered when I hurtle down a mountain of snow with my feet strapped to a board? Would they feel betrayed when, in those dark moments, some of us think how much easier it would be to simply stop existing?

We are the same thing, living on two different levels of existence. One life, in two different worlds.