What is consciousness?

   What is consciousness? It's a tricky thing isn't it? Because if you take a single atom out of me, it doesn't have thoughts, feelings, a will of its own. So you put all these little atoms together, billions of them, and suddenly they can see, they can touch, they can feel, but how? Is it by design that many atoms together develop some sort of sentience or unity to avoid dissolution? Why is it that a group of atoms can interact with another, and I feel this sensation as touch? How can the atoms in my eyes perceive photons and render that to an image only I can see? Does the universe actually look like this, or is it just my brain's way of perceiving the universe.

   Still with just those thoughts in mind, it isn't just atoms that keeps this thing going, it's energy. Because our bodies exchange atoms with our environment so often, that in just seven years we are entirely built again with completely new matter. So what am I if I'm not a product of the matter that creates me? I guess I'd be a product of the energy that brought all of my matter together. This energy that started with me being conceived, has built my body, and maintained it, but I did not control this energy and set into place. However I'm conscious from this energy, things outside of my control have brought all my matter into one place in such a way that I can perceive the universe.

   Still I grapple with these thoughts, the more questions I ask and are answered, the more I need answered. Because my matter has existed for as long as the universe has existed. Why now do I perceive? I don't even know how to put these ideas into words, life truly is one of the greatest phenomena of history. Had my parents waited even one day for my conception they would still have a child, but it wouldn't be me. That human would be fully conscious, fully family, fully their son, but I would not even have been able to perceive it. All the energy that has been guided into making me is what makes me conscious is it not? Is my energy trapped in this vessel then, forced to perceive the universe for as long as can be maintained? Or is it more than just energy?

   Even still long after I'm gone, the matter that makes me will most definitely inhabit the body of another human. If all of my atoms were to be rearranged into the form of another human, I would not be conscious of it. What happens with this energy once this vessel can no longer keep it trapped? I know my energy will persist, but will I be conscious then? Would my energy remember, in a sense, my past conscious life? Is the energy that makes me up even me, or am I product of my energy? How is it that energy can think of where it comes from and perceive it?

   Consciousness is truly beautiful, and a daunting mystery. Something I believe humans may never be able to solve. Sure we can work out all the chemical, and physical mechanisms that control our brains, but it still begs the question: How do you exist? Not the vessel that your brain controls, not the circumstances that lead up to your creation, but why is it that you uniquely are able to perceive. The ability to perceive and be conscious is one of the greatest gifts a human has, and begs so many questions that I simply cannot even put into words. At any expense, I am very grateful I get to observe the universe that has created me, and guided energy into making me the me that I am now.