Today is a day when millions of people are united by a common narrative. And it’s no ordinary narrative. In particular, it is one that promises to let you overcome the finality of death.
That’s a pretty darned powerful promise. If somebody has spent their entire life believing in that promise, you aren’t going to change their mind by talking to them about it.
Which leads me to today’s topic: What is most real to people?
We clearly live in a physical world, where we regularly encounter physical objects like chairs and apples. We all have bodily functions, we all feel the tug of gravity, we all experience the tangible world around us.
But you can’t tell a story about those things. People know that those things exist, but those things are not what is most real to us.
What is fascinating to me about us humans is that what is most real to us are things that cannot be seen in our physical world. The reality that we care about exists in an entirely different space.
There are words to describe the reality that truly matters to us. Words like “love”, “jealousy”, “kindness”, “hate”, “compassion” and “trust”.
You cannot see those things out there in the physical world — they exist only within our collective 8 billion minds. And yet they are far more real to us than mere physical objects like chairs or apples.
That might help to explain why so many people are united by a common narrative today.