1:00 a.m. Thoughts-- By Kaleigh West

This month we were supposed to write about something that is important to us. I value many things in life: my friends, family, health, and so much more. However, to try to avoid being cliche (even though cliche isn't necessarily a bad thing), I decided to write about something a little different.

On a typical night, I often find myself laying in bed at 1:00 a.m. trying to make sense of random things. I could be sleeping, but instead I lay awake trying to answer questions that haven't been clearly answered yet. These questions take up a lot of my time (probably more than they should), but one minute I ask myself a question, and the next I have five different tabs open with different research and articles with information to help me answer the question. Questions without finite answers are something that I've recently come to appreciate because it reminds us that despite all of our technology, despite all of our research, we still don't have all of the answers, and answers to these questions could change everything.

Without further ado, I present to you a (very shortened) list of my random existential questions.

1. What exactly is consciousness?

Single celled organisms such as bacteria blindly follow the laws of chemistry and physics in order to survive, but as far as we can tell, they don't seem to be self-aware or have any sense of self-purpose (other than supporting and contributing to their ecosystem and passing down their DNA). While humans are capable of so much more, when you break us down, we're just a whole bunch of cells following the laws of chemistry and physics as well, yet somehow, we have a sense of individual purpose and possess "consciousness", as well as an awareness of who we are and a sense of overall identity. At what point do these laws of physics and chemistry go from creating "existence" to creating consciousness and a sense of individual purpose?

2. Is there a limit to how much we can know?

We know that our brains can't perceive all of the colors (wavelengths of light) that exist. Does this mean that it is possible that they also can't detect another key part of reality?

If you tell a toddler that 2+2=5, they will probably believe you because they have no reason to believe otherwise. That being said, could this type of situation be happening on a larger scale to all of humanity? For all we know, we could be missing a key part of reality that our brains simply can't detect. If this were true, it would be extremely difficult (if not impossible) to realize that we're missing something, since we don't have any evidence that our current sense of reality is wrong or incomplete. Does this mean that there is a limit to how much we can truly understand reality?

I have a lot more questions, but I just chose the two that I thought were the most open-ended. I hope that you enjoyed thinking about these random things like I do.