Today, we’re going to go over a list of ideas that people may find uncomfortable. So, uh, trigger warning. Obviously.

1. Close your eyes. Imagine a random stranger sitting nearby. As a wide grin splits his face, he hovers his finger by your ear.
2. When you dream that you’re falling, would you die if you landed before you woke up? The human brain is a powerful thing, after all.
3. Papercuts on your Achilles tendon.
4. Your senses can be fooled. You’ve probably experienced it before. So how do you know that what you perceive with your eyes or ears is real? In the end, everything is taken on faith.
5. We view everything through our own lens. The way you see people is unique to you, and you certainly don’t see everything there is to know about any person, no matter how well you know them. Therefore, when you remember someone, you don’t remember that person exactly as they are. You simply recall the version of them you have stored in your memory.
6. Since memory degenerates, you don’t remember events or people exactly as they were. Not only is your perception skewed by your own personal lens, but it is also tarnished with time, so you never actually recall events. You recall memories of events, and those memories are fabricated by your own mind.
7. Odds are, the only reason you hate that one political figure is because they ran for the other party. You would never have bothered to dig up or believe any of the dirt on that person if they hadn’t run for office, nor would you be so keen on overlooking their better qualities. Truth is, everyone has dirt in their past, but most people try to do what’s right too. Your condemnation of that person isn’t based on truth—it’s based on artificial systems and mere samplings of the truth.
8. Odds are, the only reason you love that one political figure is because they didn’t run for the other party and maybe said some stuff you agreed with. If this wasn’t the case, you’d have willingly believed all the dirt dug up on them and overlooked their better qualities.
9. Everyone will die someday. Each day takes you closer to the end, and as much as you might try to delay it, there is no way to stop it.
10. Every moment you have spent hating someone or being angry has been a moment spent in misery. The crazy part is the object of your anger likely had no intention of upsetting you, but even if they did, you gain nothing from stewing in anger. Therefore, if you are often angry, you have lived a good chunk of your finite life in misery for no reason.
11. Odds are, there is someone out there in this world who hates you for something you didn’t mean. You might not even be aware of it. What are the odds, then, that the stupid, insensitive things others have done that offended you were done with evil intent? Are you really that much better than anyone else?
12. If you care a great deal about avoiding offense toward anyone, you probably care about it far more than the potentially offended parties would be. As such, you’ve probably gotten uptight over hurtful things that never actually hurt anyone.
13. Slowly hammering a narrow screwdriver under your fingernails, then prying them off.
14. Human perception is finite. You don’t see everything, so you will always miss some detail or other. As such, when you make a plan, you can never be completely sure that it will work because there will always be details you have not accounted for. Something can always go wrong.
15. The words you use to express an idea shape the way you think about it. If you’ve talked about your beliefs, you have likely altered them in subtle ways by expressing them in words. Your beliefs changed, and you didn’t even know it.
16. If you have argued with someone about your beliefs, you may have shaped your beliefs into a clear opposite of the argument posed by the other person. Unbeknownst to you, you might have even agreed with them initially, but because you decided to be contrary, you ended up morphing your beliefs to the point where that was no longer the case. So how can you be so sure that you were right?
17. When you’re driving on city roads, a jerk of the steering wheel could send you straight into oncoming traffic. Don’t sneeze.
18. When you’re crossing the street on foot and the roads are iced over, you could slip and fall just as an oncoming driver finds they can’t stop in time.
19. Scraping your teeth on the chalkboard.
20. That which is observed must be observed by a separate entity. You can observe your own thoughts and feelings, so those can’t be you, can they? Who are you, then?

If you have any other items to add to this list, let me know! Also, be sure to spread this around to make all your friends feel uncomfortable too. All proceeds go toward cleaning people’s brains off the walls after they’ve been blown away by nihilistic philosophy. Really.