Freaky Friday: Are We Our Brains? Do Our Bodies Really Matter?

Let’s switch bodies. Are we our brains? Do our bodies really matter? Will you see what I feel like?

Imagine we all have an identical twin, and then “Freaky Friday” happens. My body goes to my twin and her body becomes my body.

Would we feel different? Do you think we would see things differently? Does our body hold the events of our lived lives or is it all stored in our brains? When we look at ourselves and see a body that resembles our own, but has marks and scars and shapes and colouring that are not our own, would we start to feel different? Would we change from the person we once were? In what ways would our twin’s body affect our personality, or the life path that we were traveling on? Or, would the switch have any affect at all? Would we remain the same?

What if our twin has had a set of experiences that are fundamentally different than our own, would their life history make itself known somehow through the way our new body moves? Is muscle memory so strong and resilient that we would always feel like a stranger in our body for the rest of our lives? Would we be able to play Chopin or Shostakovitch without ever having touched an instrument before or to draw with ease without having done so before? Or would our brain take over and rewrite our twin’s muscle memories with our own and slowly our arms and legs and our twin’s muscle memories would become diminished and our body would start to feel like ours once again?

Would my twin see what I am feeling? Do you think my twin would see themselves in the way I move and would my body movements always remind them of themselves and who they once were? Would we feel like we’ve invaded our twin’s most private experiences or would we just need a trial period to get used to our bodies before feeling at home in them?

Leave a comment below, because I’m curious to hear your thoughts and ideas about this question.