Classic question in college philosophy: if a tree falls in the forest, but no one witnesses it, did it still fall?  What is real?

Let’s simplify things and say that yes, it’s the witnessing that makes the falling real.

My follow up question is this: what constitutes witnessing? What does it mean to witness?

Does one witness with the senses–eyes, ears, nose, tongue, skin? When we see, smell, hear, taste, touch, is it then that something becomes real to us? Or do we do it emotionally, mentally, spiritually? Is something or someone real when we feel, think, commune with or transcend it? Is it the connection that makes it real? Is to witness, to connect?Apply this to the modern phenomenon of online dating. Online dating has opened the dating floodgates for previously unknown permutations of relationships. Nowadays, it is possible to have an everyday relationship with someone living thousands of miles away in a different timezone, and with whom we don’t share a real-life context.  It is possible to know someone and still never have met in person. Technology has given us tools to bridge the sensory gap of physical distance through the internet, social media, video calls–you name it. Presence–that space where the magic happens between two people–can now take on a non-physical form.  Or can it?

Her is a movie that presented the possibility of a relationship with an artificial intelligence, a construct. A man falls in love with a voice that talks to him.  Does the fact that the “other” in the relationship is a non-human make the connection (i.e. relationship) artificial?  If the relationship is one-sided, exists in one’s head, is it any less real?  What if it impacts that person’s life for the better, making him a more effective workmate, son, friend?  Is it real then?  One can say the same of faith, which is based on a total surrender to a mystery, unknown, unverifiable Other.  Where does one draw the line between real and imagined?

Stretching this a bit further, isn’t memory also intangible? Yesterday and tomorrow–do they belong in the realm of what is real or imagined?

I opened an old journal the other day and read open-hearted entries on love written by 28-year-old me.  I cried. I didn’t realize I felt so deeply once upon a time.  I’d forgotten.

The pain was not in reminiscing the pain, but in realizing how much I’ve possibly missed out on because I’ve held back since then.  I haven’t been in that open, vulnerable, wide-eyed and wide-hearted space for years, and who knows what gains I passed on because I closed myself off.

I sat with a friend and talked about our fears of being vulnerable and getting hurt again, and I found myself articulating advice which I also needed to hear:

Stop the fantasy of promise.  When there’s someone before you, let go of forever, the long haul, next month or tomorrow.  There is never a guarantee you’ll get there.  But now, here you are.  Enjoy it.  It is enough.

Stop trying so hard.  We are intense people.  We wear our hearts on our sleeves and give our all, right away, in total surrender.  Why?  Is it because we believe that we are loving the person best when we are intense?  Maybe this, in reality, is a vain exercise, an imposition of who we are, without enough regard for who the other is.  And maybe it is an example of why it is easier to give than to receive.

The best relationships, everyone says, are based on friendships.  Friendships flow.  There is no outright agenda among friends, no trying so hard, no future to move towards.  What’s there is a respectful witnessing of each other’s individual agenda.  No pressure to impress the other, to be our best selves, to keep up an ideal.  A friendship is relaxed and forgiving.  It is not possessive, obsessive, addictive.

It’s been seven years since I lost or muted the capacity to feel so deeply, and what a gift to be reminded of and befriend my past self as I enter a new 7-year cycle this year.   Can’t say it enough– I’m very excited for what’s to come!