Reduced to atoms and molecules

Update: Today, it rains once more. Past Lives - Sometimes the dreamers finally wake up.

I am broken.... not by pain, not by stress, not by my work. It was knowledge that broke me. The veil was swept from my eyes and along with it- my free will. Future me, do you even know what we are?

It is a scientific fact that every thought, emotion, choice, or decision that we can conjure in our mind has a physical source. A physiological mechanism. I finally realize that our thoughts do not exist in some other dimension. They exist in the physical world, for they are nothing more than action potentials and neurotransmitters. Growing up, they always said the human spirit was unbreakable, an indominable force it was. Today, I realized every inch of our consciousness can be explained by chemical reactions and neurons. I have been reduced to mere atoms and molecules...

In space, if you set an object in motion, it will go on forever until it bounces off another object. Sometimes a strong gravitational force will pull the object off course as well. We are no different. Our brains were set in motion since birth - molded and influenced by the environment and the minds around us. We bounce off the minds of others like comets redirecting their paths. Every choice we've made has been a result and culmination of all the events that happened prior. There is no free will. We had the illusion of choice, but those decisions were going to happen no matter what. Synapses form with every new experience, every new experience was influenced by an old experience. An object set into motion.

Choice is an illusion. At least I no longer have any regrets, every "choice" I ever made was not a true one. I was going to choose those choices no matter what. Something happens in my environment, an action potential fires in my mind as a reaction, a thought appears as a result, a synapse forms. In reality, we don't even conjure our own thoughts, there is no choice , there is no randomness. It is a reaction that formulates from everything up until that moment. If you duplicated my brain and plugged it into a computer, then ran a bunch of simulations. You could predict my every movement, basically predicting my future.

so what now? 

   Figure 100. A man among the stars. A man wakes up to the reality that he is simply a formulation of synapses and action potentials. He is but particles... reduced to mere atoms and molecules. What then of man's quest to become the greatest? To conquer all the mountains of his world? Sail every sea? What even am I if I cannot control my own mind?