The Open Heart

 

What is in me?

It is so much more than my great ideas. It is also my empathy. I have something beyond a capacity to think; I can feel. Volumes of dictionaries contain data, but there are no dictionaries with empathy. The internet is now running at an alarming speed, with an astounding cache of retrievable information, but the entire internet has no sense of what it feels like to be any one of the researchers trying to extract or include new data. Empathy is likely the result of trial and error. If only two people existed, and I happened to be one of them, I would want to keep the other one going as much as I’d want to survive. Through experience, I have found that others enrich myself. I’ve also learned that as I enrich others, they generally return the favor in some way, at some point. An investment into others yields bilateral joy. This is true, even in the unlikely event that an-other can never return the favor. Giving is, in itself, rewarding. I know this to be true because I have given to people who could never repay me. I’ve done it quietly and out of sight. And when I do, something about that act of kindness brings me joy. It is an unreasonable claim, but it takes place daily.

People’s hearts open when you do what you can; knowing they are in no position to repay you.

And when you do this, with your open heart, the receiving – and now open heart – beats with your own heart for a while; and the commonality of the human experience makes you feel twice as alive as when you kept this experience to yourself.

To feel alive is what it really means to be conscious; to feel twice as alive is what it means to Love; and it is only possible to Love that which is somehow a part of more than self alone.

It is possible to love yourself, but if there was nothing other than yourself, love would not include a feeling.

A very good computer is a self of sorts, but it is unaware of what lies beyond its data and it will never be able to sense what it means to be good to others. A computer is not selfish; it is just unaware. In the same way, you and I would be unaware if there were no opposites. Our connection to all that is not-self gives rise to what it feels like to be.

There is a way to test whether or not you are a simulation: Do you feel?

Descartes would say data is fundamental. I say data is completely pointless if you cannot feel.