A Millimetre Thick

My “self” is just the biofilm floating on the surface of a well so deep I can’t see the bottom.

My “will” is just conjecture on what lurks in the inky deep, interpretations of the reaction of my body to stimulus, and only the tiniest moment of actual conscious choosing; refraction that slightly alters the paths of input and output.

I have that advantage – knowing that I am the conscious filter between what’s within and what’s without – and the knowing affords me some small relief that I am, at least, a millimetre thick.

I figure that the self ends at death, that everything I am is mechanically explainable and it only continues as long as my body is alive.

Certainly, the little bits of universe that make me up will scatter and form something new, not that those atoms were ever particularly, stably mine.

Perhaps some of my impact on the people and the trajectory of the future will persist for a time.

Aside from that, when I die I will be gone. The well dried up.