Biggest AHA! so far this year
(or Never too old to find out who you really are)

Something amazing happened to me today. Today, aged 34, I found out that there is actually a name for my most basic philosophy, for that thing I base everything else on and that has really been the whole foundation of my views on everything for the last… well, 15 years?

Not only am I not alone (which I never really thought I was anyway – I’m not that conceited), but the next time my husband rolls his eyes and says “oh, here we go again… stuuuuudent” I can reply that while it may all be over his head, there is actually an –ism for what I am talking about. Some of whose supporters I am almost certain are not university students with a close resemblance to Neil from The Young Ones swigging red wine one some dorm floor.

So how about getting to the point? What is the name, and what is it all about? Well, here we go, it’s called… drum roll… SOLIPSISM! Who’s familiar with that? If you are, you might want to take a look in the mirror to make sure your hair didn’t suddenly grow longer. And you might be better off not admitting if you know me in real life, because if you do, you really should have told me about this a long time ago.

Anyway, congratulations if you knew about this and if you didn’t, it’s time you stopped laughing at me. I’m a solipsist and I’m proud!

So what exactly is the definition of solipsism? Well, here is Merriam Webster’s version:

“a theory holding that the self can know nothing but its own modifications and that the self is the only existent thing”

Still not sure? Have some more from Encyclopaedia Britannica:

“the extreme form of subjective idealism that denies that the human mind has any valid ground for believing in the existence of anything but itself”

Still about as clear as mud? OK, let’s see.

Those of you who know me: It’s that thing, you know, where I say that nothing really exists unless there is someone there to perceive it. Remember? The chair in the next room that you’re sure was there a minute ago but that isn’t actually there right now because we are all in this room? That’s the one. That’s solipsism.

Those of you who don’t know me: Let me tell you a story about a chair. It’s in the room next to the one I’m in now, except I can’t see it, hear it, taste it, smell it or feel it. Which essentially means that it doesn’t exist, because to whom does it exist when there’s no-one there?

Yeah, blah, blah, blah (which, coincidentally, is what my 5-year-old has taken to answering me every time I open my mouth – I am sure he is really 15 and I just didn’t notice him growing). But you get my drift – and you’ve all heard it before even if, like me, you didn’t know there was a name for it.

I will leave you now with a thought provoking question. What about my other important theory, which you have all also heard before and quite possibly sneered at as another sign that I really should go get a life?

It's the one that says that really, we have no evidence that we wake up every morning as the same people we were yesterday. What’s to say that we aren’t just a new person with what we believe to be "memories" imprinted on our brain? What’s to say, even, that there is such a thing as time and that we are not just reliving the same moment again and again a la Groundhog Day? Or that rather than actually reliving it, we have just the one moment, once?

The question is, does that theory have a name, too, that I don’t know about? Or does it fall under the solipsism umbrella? Answers on a postcard, please.