This idea that there is generality in the specific is of far-reaching importance. - Douglas Hofstadter

Perhaps the greatest contradiction in our lives, the hardest to handle, is the knowledge 'There was a time when I was not alive, and there will come a time when I am not alive.' On one level, when you 'step out of yourself' and see yourself as 'just another human being', it makes complete sense. But on another level, perhaps a deeper level, personal nonexistence makes no sense at all. All that we know is embedded inside our minds, and for all that to be absent from the universe is not comprehensible. This is a basic undeniable problem of life...

Reality includes creating every real connection and reference.

We have a very hard time “seeing” our cognitive activity because it is the medium in which we swim. The attempt to put our finger on what counts in any given situation leads us at times to making connections between situations that are enormously different on their surface and at other times to distinguishing between situations that on first glance seem nearly identical. Our constant jockeying back and forth among our categories runs the gamut from the most routine behaviors to the most creative ones.