Existence is in Thought

Part 1

I lay on my bed,

staring at the ceiling,

admiring it's smooth, cream surface

contrasting the ceiling panels of a place I once knew, a long time ago.

    Ciety knocks three times before slowly opening my bedroom door. "Good morning! What you up to?" she asks me excitedly.

    "Not much," I reply, sitting up quickly on my neatly folded bed, "Just thinking." I was reminded of how Ciety had always been such a great friend to me. She was always there to help me out and I could trust her with anything.

    "Well if you ask me," Ciety replied, "thinking is a waste of time. Life is about doing what is right, no matter what you think."

    "I guess you're right," I said, for the first time noticing the a vague desire deep inside me to question Ciety's advice. It was an odd sensation since I don't recall ever in my life defying Ciety. She always knew the best thing to do and her words have never failed me yet.

    "How come you're still in your pajamas, don't you remember that we have penmanship practice today?" Ciety reminded me.

    "I can't believe I forgot, we always practice penmanship on these days!" I followed Ciety down the hall to the plain white room where we normally do our penmanship. Ciety flipped open the penmanship book to a new page titled "Truth, Existence, and Reality." We proceeded to copy the words into our notebook, focusing on perfecting every stroke of our pens.

"Penmanship isn't about perfection," Ciety reminded me, "It's about trying your best, trying your best is all that matters."

I take her words to heart as I try even harder to perfect the symbols. After a few seconds, I realize that I was paying so much attention to copying the letters I didn't even stop to read what I was writing. I look up from my notebook for a moment and notice on the wall in front of me a black and white painting I never noticed before.

    "Where did that painting come from?" I asked, turning towards Ciety who was engulfed in her writing.

    "Don't you remember?" a look of confusion on her face as she looked up from her work, "We made that painting last week."

     "Oh ya," I said, suddenly remembering all the details of how we had decided to make a painting and used black paint and water to paint me and Ciety in the hallway.

Except,

I didn't actually remember sketching out the hallway,

or painting over the mistakes with white paint,

until Ciety told me.

It wasn't quite like recalling a forgotten memory,

but more like creating a new one.

    I look down at my paper and saw written on the page, "Ciety is the truth. Follow the truth always." Again I felt rebellion in my soul, but stronger this time. I knew I could trust Ciety more than anyone else, but was she really the truth?  I wondered how do we really know what is the truth and why must we always follow it?

    "You're thinking too much," Ciety said interrupting my thoughts, "Just focus on your writing and you'll be fine."

    But that just made me wonder even more! Why are we even coping words out of a book anyways, and why does Ciety want me to stop thinking? Why can't we write our own ideas instead of copying them out of a book? And it just now occurred to me that I'm wearing normal clothes even though I never took my pajamas off.

    Now Ciety was visibly angry as she stood up and slammed her pencil on the table. She cried, "I've been trying to be as patient as I can with you, but you're pushing me across the line. Why must you always question the way things are?! Why can't you just accept that this is the way things are and you can't change that!"

Suddenly an idea popped into my head.

It was rather strange and foreign

yet, somehow, familiar and common.

What if the memories I have in my mind

have been placed there by someone else?

    Suddenly Ciety's facial expression morphed from anger into one of a maniacal scientist. "Truly Aspen, you are too smart for your own good. Indeed I have been placing your memories into your mind but I don't think the truth is something you really want to find."

    Confused I didn't know how to take it all in. "Am I dreaming?" I asked the person I had a few minutes earlier thought to be my closest friend.

    "Does it really matter if you're awake or asleep?" Ciety replied, "This is your reality either way."

    Confused and frantic I was lost for words. Everything I thought I knew was crumbling to pieces. Finally I said, "I just want to know the truth." I was groping for any sort of solid basis for reality I could find.

    "You think truth is what you want?" Ciety scoffed, "And what will you do when you find it? If you knew what is happening to you right now, where you are, who you are; what are you going to do with that information? Suppose you find out that you are right, and you are supposed question everything to find out if it's really true. What will you do when you find this absolute truth? Follow it to the ends of the Earth since following the truth is the the right thing to do? "

    I stared at the madness in Ciety's eyes trying to understand everything she was telling me.

    "No," she continued "What you want is not to be bound to truth but to have freedom. You want to be free to do whatever you please without facing any consequences. With freedom you will always be happy, perhaps ignorantly happy, but does knowing the truth really matter if it means you will no longer be free?"

    I thought about everything she was saying. What if Ciety actually wasn't the truth, and what if I did find out what was the truth? Would I then be satisfied and always follow this new truth or would I want to rebel against what I already knew was right? Maybe freedom was what I actually wanted.

    "Here," Ciety said to me, motioning for me to follow her out of the classroom, "I'll give you three choices and you are free to pick anyone you want."

    We walked into the hallway where in the plain white walls were three doors, one white, one black, and one grey.

    "You have three doors to chose from," Ciety instructed me, "The first door lets you stay in this world, except you must follow everything I say without failure. The second door leads to truth, but in that world you must also follow what is true without failure. The third door is freedom. You may do whatever you please without consequences and will always be happy, at the price of forever living in ignorance. Chose rightly."

    I look at all the doors and think about how Ciety could easily be lying to me and I really don't know what actually is behind these door; yet I still wanted to trust her. Slowly I walked towards the wall, picking the door of my choosing.