Dear Mirror,
Do I want to be a millionaire? It’s a strange question when you stop to look at it closely. Not because money isn’t useful, but because of what the question really asks. What is it I’m chasing when no one else is watching? What do I believe counts as “real” when the applause fades and the mirror is the only audience left?
We spend our lives making bets. Some of us pile up experiences, possessions, trophies, stories. We grab the world with both hands, squeeze every ounce out of it, live loud, live fast, die spent and smiling. Carpe diem, unapologetically. If this world is the point, then why not take everything it offers?
Others feel a tug in a different direction. They invest in things that don’t sparkle. Meaning. Depth. Connection. Curiosity. Integrity. The quiet work of becoming. These things don’t show up on balance sheets, but they feel heavier than gold. They feel like they might travel with us, wherever this story goes next.
And here’s the honest truth after all this digging: we don’t know which view of reality is right. Physicalism or idealism. One life or many. Beginning and end or something stranger. We don’t get certainty. We only get this moment, this awareness, this uncanny ability to ask the question at all.
Maybe that’s the point.
The reality we inhabit is the only one we can know for now, and that should make us humble. It should make us curious. It should fill us with awe that consciousness exists at all, that we can reflect, choose, doubt, hope. That may be as close to an answer as we ever get.
So we ask you, not as a challenge but as an invitation:
Which way will you live?
As if the physical world is the destination, or the distraction?
Which path makes you feel more connected to what you believe is real?
From the prism of reflection,
~ The Radical Left