I know I exist because the emotional pain I struggle against everyday is too intense for any mere phantom. As Dostoyevsky said, "Though I sit alone on a pillar, I exist!" What does it mean, after all, to exist? It means you are substantial in some way, shape, or form. If I can prod you with a stick, you exist! Whether dead or alive, you will always exist! Though your body lies inanimate six feet under or scattered in the form of ashes on the back of the wind, you are still there.

In fact, even when you haven't been born yet you exist. Forgive me, I know it is unbearable to hear, but you rode around in Mommy and Daddy's loins before they put the seeds together, and in that form you existed! The very first man existed before the earth was even born because he came of the earth and the earth came of something else!

So even though I've never seen the face of god or discovered the mysteries of the world or if ghosts are real or if the truth is really out there, I know at least that I exist. I might be stranded, totally alone on an island, but I exist! I might go completely ignored by every person I meet but I know I exist. I look in the mirror and smile and know that I existed when my mother cut her first tooth, I existed when the first slave child was torn from its mother, I existed when the dinosaurs were the terror of the earth. I have always existed through the blood of my ancestors and through the blood of the earth, and others exist through me.

"Though I sit alone on a pillar, I exist!"

Learn more about this author, Ms P. K. Styles.
Click here to send this author comments or questions.

---

Add your voice

Know something about How do we know that we exist??
We want to hear your view. Write now!