The car crashes its nose into a snowdrift. Fine snow covers the windshield as soon as you stop the wipers. I sit silently, listening to the steady hum of the engine. And when you get lost in your own thoughts like this, you often ask yourself an unexpected and strange question: who are you, and where are you?
Of course, I remember my name, understand that I'm in my car, and know exactly where in the city I parked it. But I'm talking about something more than simply remembering facts. About a feeling. About self-awareness. The perception of all these facts here and now. It's funny, but most of the time we don't experience this. Life flows around us like a movie. We cross the street, shake hands with an acquaintance, answer the phone, pet a dog, stub our little toe on the table leg. But all of this is nothing more than hyper-realistic cinema. A set of vivid impressions. An amusement park virtual reality ride with roller coasters. Because in none of these moments do we usually even realize: this am I, this is happening right now, and it's happening to me. We don't think about it. From birth, we are immersed in the surrounding world, yet completely alienated from ourselves.
* * *
Probably, it begins at the very moment when you open your eyes after leaving your mother's womb. You try to gather your thoughts inside your still-small brain to answer these simple questions: Who am I? Where am I? You struggle desperately. Unable to speak, you cry out. Every time, sinking into sleep without answers and waking up again with these questions. And then, when you seem close to finding yourself, you are shown your first rattle. Bright, loud, and interesting—it completely captures your attention. Later in your life, there will be many more different rattles. Some will be given by your parents, others imposed by society, and still others you will buy for yourself. All just to avoid mentally returning to that primal fear of the unknown: Who am I? Where am I?
Strangely enough, it returned to me for the first time in school—a place where you're supposed to get rid of unnecessary questions, where the world is expected to become simpler and clearer. Maybe it was due to my inquisitive mind. Or maybe something else.
I studied far from home and had to take a bus every day to the city center and back. Life wasn't yet generous with teenagers, offering an abundance of gadgets with large screens, so the only entertainment was silently looking out the window. And I did look, leaving behind the conversations in the bus cabin, its swaying on uneven roads, and even the objects rushing past my eyes. Where am I? In a crowded bus. What's happening to me? I'm going to school. Just like yesterday. And exactly the same way I'll go tomorrow. Yet at this moment, I can distinguish between past and future if everything seems planned in advance. And why? Does anyone really need this? Who does? The concept of a higher intelligence already seemed absurd to me back then. Perhaps people simply find it convenient to create a predictable sequence of actions for themselves, so they don't have to think each time about what to do next? That's how I reasoned as a teenager, looking out the window of an overcrowded bus.
It was then that I came up with the idea for an experiment. Not exactly. First, there was an unconscious desire, and only later did my brain, having analyzed it, construct a suitable rational explanation.
Why not disrupt the usual course of things? Do something outside the ordinary. No. Nothing criminal or provocative. Nothing that would affect other people in any way. Probably, it wouldn't even be noticed. Just get off at a random stop. Not because you want to skip classes. Not because you need to go somewhere else. Not even out of defiance. But just like that! Get off where you don't need to. Walk somewhere down the street. See places—ordinary places you've never seen before. Simply because they were never needed.
But while I was thinking about all this, trying to imagine those very ordinary yet amazing places, the bus had already arrived at my stop. And I got off. And walked along my usual route.
Surprisingly, now, years later, I clearly remember that day and that moment of enlightenment, down to the smell of decaying rubber bus handrails, which lingered on my hands for a long time. But then, already the next day, I forgot everything. Both the philosophical questions and the mental experiment. Or rather, at that time it remained purely mental. It dissolved into the flow of daily events.
The second time I remembered it was much later, when I was a student studying at the institute. Yes, then too, I had to travel across the entire city by public transport every day, but the old thoughts and experiences didn't arise there at all. I wasn't going anywhere. I wasn't bored anywhere. And I wasn't thinking about anything. Waking up in the morning, I went to the bathroom, started washing my face, plunging it under a stream of icy water, and, looking in the mirror, didn't recognize my own face. It wasn't different or new, as if I had seen a stranger. But suddenly I realized that I didn't relate to it at all. Not because I disliked my face or, conversely, liked it. It wasn't a critical self-assessment or a sudden revelation, like an unexpectedly appearing pimple on my nose. It wasn't about self-esteem or appearance at all. Obviously, at that moment, my internal mental representation of myself was too far removed from what I perceived through my senses. It seemed as though some part of my personality, long formed inside, had somehow broken through outwardly and, gaining temporary access to the image, was surprised. The state lasted no more than a minute. Facial expressions, the ability to fully control my facial expression, cold drops running down my face—all instantly brought everything back into place: I am who I am. But a peculiar aftertaste of such a momentary confusion remained. The damned questions brightly ignited again in my confused mind. Who am I? Where am I? Naturally, not finding any original answers to them, I simply went about my business. And they disappeared again, as always.
Indeed, our crazy life is the best remedy against unnecessary thoughts and lengthy reasoning. An endless stream of tasks and problems seems specifically designed to prevent a person from stopping. It actually ends only when one runs out of strength. This is a very short, almost insignificant moment before falling asleep, when consciousness finally disconnects from pressing concerns and calms down. A too-marginal moment of freedom between sleep and wakefulness, too small to dedicate to truly important thoughts.
I have tried many times to catch this microscopic interval of time—to experience the process itself. I lay in the darkness, listening to my sensations: heavy eyelids, relaxation spreading through my muscles, slowing heart rate. The most important and difficult thing was not to let my mind return to current problems, not to lose control over myself here and now; otherwise, I would fall asleep without noticing it.
Perhaps I shouldn't have done this at all. Even the most innocent psychological experiments sometimes lead to unexpected and even strange consequences. To this day, I don't know if something broke inside my head. Or perhaps it was broken all along, and I just revealed it. The fact is that after my experiments, the boundary between sleep and wakefulness suddenly blurred. And this was quite natural. Student life is hectic. At first, you stay awake for days on end, trying not to miss anything and unwilling to give up anything. Then your body starts openly rebelling against you. You often fall asleep in inappropriate places and uncomfortable positions, waking up at an unfamiliar metro station or an empty bus stop at four in the morning, when the whole city is asleep. The next day, you lie in bed, waking up well past noon and unable to tell whether it's morning or evening. Clocks and calendars cease to exist for you at such moments. And again, those same questions arise. Who am I? Where am I? You're left alone with them in an empty dormitory room. And if you've awakened there from a black, empty oblivion, it's a great stroke of luck. Fragments of yesterday's tasks and plans quickly bring you back to reality. Manipulating them, your brain instantly assembles around them a puzzle of surrounding reality. The trouble is that this isn't my case. From about the age of five, I've vividly remembered my dreams. Yes, sometimes they are very confused, blurry, and not so vivid that it's possible to reconstruct the entire chronology. But this didn't prevent me from making one amazing discovery quite early on. All my dreams, in one way or another, are connected to each other. They are far from being a random collection of fantasies and images inspired by internal experiences, events of the past day, or a movie I watched. I'll start by saying that these are always very realistic dreams. No, not reliable according to the standards of our lives. Strange, phantasmagoric things often happen in them, but they never take place in some fictional world. Falling asleep, I find myself surrounded by elements of the familiar reality—places I've visited, homes I've seen, streets I've walked on. Often located thousands of kilometers apart, in my dream they turn out to be very close. They alternate with completely invented objects, such as impressively sized dams, high bridges, or huge pipes stretching into the distance. Perhaps it's due to the poverty of my imagination, but all this comes together and merges into some fascinating city made up of my memories. I know the location and purpose of buildings, I know their interiors. And I easily recognize them when I enter. Often down to the smallest details: sounds, creaks, roughness of various surfaces, smells... The space of the dream seems to be prepared by my brain for later playing out certain plots within it. It becomes populated by people familiar to me—living and dead. With those whom I barely knew or, conversely, spent much time with. Most of them were not and could not have been acquainted in reality. However, I myself, regardless of my age, can imagine myself in a dream as a child, a teenager, or already a fully grown man. And each time, I find myself involved in some story lived or completely new to me, filled with all these spatial inconsistencies and anachronisms.
So, one night I dreamed about that very bus. And myself. A teenager riding across the whole city to school. And the emergence of an unmotivated desire to suddenly get off at an unknown stop. And now I'm already moving through the crowded cabin. I feel the vibrations of the metal floor on the uneven road, hear the rattling, inhale the smell of old rubber handrails. Finally, I get off at an unfamiliar stop to walk down an unfamiliar street somewhere unknown. I smile. Either at the warm sun or at my inner happiness that I managed to do it. And I wake up because that very sun is shining through the window. Who am I? Where am I? I overslept again.
Sometimes it seems to me that in my dream I see my whole life, where time and space have simply stopped working properly. Where years freeze into golden, warm August evenings or weeks-long cold rains pour endlessly from a gray sky. And yet, everything there is perfectly clear. There, unresolved questions never torment me. And now I lie down on a familiar sofa in a familiar apartment, only to wake up exactly there, not understanding whether I've already woken up or not. And the questions arise again. Who am I? Where am I? To be honest, sometimes I even had the thought that reality and dreams in my head had once been mixed up. That sunny, warm place where all my friends and relatives are gathered, where all the beloved places are located within a couple of blocks and there's no need to hurry anywhere—that is the real reality. After all, I return there every time I fall asleep. It's not for nothing that I always remember it in the smallest details.
It's funny that even there I sometimes have disturbing nightmares, but the scariest thing still remains the moment of awakening. Neat pictures turn into blurred images and a state of inner emptiness. And old questions linger. Who am I? Where am I?
But again, I hold my face under streams of water, meet eyes with the gaze of a person reflected in the mirror. Whoever I may be, right now I simply need to go to work.
I do this again every day. Again, I cross the city, looking at it through glass. Now it's the windshield of a car. But essentially, nothing has changed. I make familiar turns at familiar intersections. I stop at familiar traffic lights, waiting for the usual crowd to pass through the usual crosswalk. Sometimes it seems to me that I recognize the people walking among them. I wouldn't be surprised if they really are the same people. After all, they, like me, do the same thing every day. Why? A stupid question. A person must work. We participate in social movement. We keep the economy functioning. It's a pity that sitting in the office and preparing another report, I don't feel any movement at all. I don't sense any activity. There's no meaningful result left inside me. My eyes look at the screen, but at some point they fall through it. They seep past letters and numbers, becoming blurred and unimportant. Thoughts fly past this reality, time after time rushing into the realm of dreams. There, where school friends remain unchanged. Where both the elderly and children live simultaneously. Where the most precious and memorable places are located just around the corner. Where unusual things happen and amazing journeys take place. Where the warm August evening stretches on endlessly. And where I am free.
Every time I think about this, I want to carry out my old childhood experiment. Turn in the wrong direction. What will it change? Who knows? Maybe—everything? But I drive along the familiar route again and again. There is my work. Work bringing stability and confidence in tomorrow. It seems that in the eternal pursuit of this, I've lost something more important. Me.
* * *
I turn off the engine and get out of the car. I've wanted it for a long time, but now it's no longer necessary to me, just like the constant repayment of the car loan. A few steps through the snowdrifts leave behind a narrow strip of path running along the field. I unclench my hand and let go into the snow a bag containing my MacBook and work documents. They are very valuable and important. But not to me. It's simply hard for me to carry them every day, because they have long since become shackles. I step onto the snow-covered field, dragging behind me my heavier coat. It's a very fashionable and expensive coat—of the same brand worn by top managers in our company and even the CEO himself. Inappropriately expensive for clothing. I throw it into the snow, and at the same time discard my fancy smartphone. This is the last thing connecting me to the so-called modern world. I no longer have any dreams that I tried to buy with money. No more things through which I wanted to express my individuality. No more trinkets. In reality, they were simply stealing my freedom.
Straightening my shoulders, I take a deep breath of fresh, frosty air and take a step. Again and again. It's difficult, but I'm even more tired of everything else. Ahead lies only a vast white expanse, through which snow rushes. And all I want now is to fall into it. To lie motionless, feeling it burying me from above. And to fall asleep myself. To sleep... And finally, to wake up. That's the only thing I can truly do right now.