Mayank Singamreddy

seeing the old with new eyes

March 2026

There is a taste to the saliva in your mouth. There is a boredom to browsing the internet for interesting content. The inescapable feeling of existing within your body.

All your friends (unless currently asleep) are experiencing their own version of all of that right now. Same with your parents.

Zoom out.

Every single person in your neighborhood has their own version of this with whatever they're doing and thinking about right now.

Try and feel the bubble expanding here: it's the same with everyone in your

city (Cupertino — 60,000)

county (Santa Clara — 1,900,000)

state (California — 39,000,000)

country (United States — 340,000,000)

continent (North America — 580,000,000)

planet (Earth — 8,200,000,000)

They're all experiencing life at the same depth of experience as you are right now.

"Yeah, so what?"

If we spent all our time feeling the weight of this, nothing would get done. But it's important to remember:

All the words we have for the world and how it works, "fashion", "good", "gravity", and "normal" are all abstractions that make the world easier to discuss more quickly with other humans.

Try to remember the time before you knew all these words. You saw the world for exactly what it was: a seemingly endless stream of events comprised of objects that occurred in front of you. Every object had a texture. Every event had a cause and effect.

If you do this exercise properly, it should incapacitate you for a good 30 seconds. By that point the mental defense system should kick back in and you'll return to seeing it the "normal" way (just hopefully with 10% higher saturation).