The most interesting of perspectives

Now that it's autumn - and don't start telling me it's still technically summer! - I've taken up sitting on a rock in my backyard after my morning run. During the summer it was too hot and too windless (aka dead) to sit there and think. But now it's perfect. And it keeps getting better with the increasing amount of color around. (Until winter arrives.)

It's probably my favourite spot at home, even if it's not technically home since it's on the backyard of an apartment building (stop with the technicalities already!). You get a fabulous view over a valley: first a steep gorge, then a small forest (home for deer, some moose, foxes, you name it), then some kind of grain field, then a river, then a railroad, then more forest. It's truly lovely, especially when it's windy so you can hear the sound of millions and millions little birch and aspen leaves move against each other. Not to mention when it's raining! The effect is even more powerful then - you can hear the rain hit all the leaves. The sound resembles a stormy sea, in a somewhat calmer scale.

So I just sit there and listen, with no hurry anywhere, and let the feeling of simulation fall upon me. (Over-romanticizing intended.)

It's funny that I feel most like in a simulation in a place and in a situation that simultaneously makes me feel most alive. On the one hand, I feel gratitude, meditative, peaceful, and in a sense, one with nature and the universe. On the other hand, I feel like none of this is in fact "real" (in a sense that physical objects are real) - that someone programmed the nature I'm enjoying, the universe and everything in it, including me and my thoughts that very moment. That my code could, by reaching a throw-out-of-loop exit line, end at any moment, and put the memory to some other use. I feel like I have to do something remarkable before it does. And at the same time, that the remarkable thing has already been realized - with me sitting on the rock, pondering over this.

You might think it's a scary feeling and that I'd rather do anything but think these thoughts. But it's not as frightening as it sounds. Though I do admit it sounds pretty scary, and I was uncomfortable with the thoughts at first. But you get used to it. And soon enough it not only becomes comfortable but also you find solace in the feeling.

Because - somehow - nothing and everything matters.