here is what i would say to singlets about multiplicity as i experience it:
i want you to imagine that instead of your experiences being solid objects, they are liquids. and with different boiling points. so some of them are already turning into gas. but everyone still acts like they are solid objects. so when you try to figure out what happened on tuesday or in your childhood, it’s like someone says, “hey, hand me the red ball!” and you have to look at all these liquids and gases and try to shape and pull out some combination that looks something like a red ball. but it isn’t. it isn’t anything like that. you can’t even quite imagine what it’s like to hold a solid memory in your hand.
imagine that an assortment of everyone you know and have heard of (in my case an incredibly large assortment), including friends, enemies, co-workers, customers, teachers, strangers, characters from media, was put into a network of interconnecting spaces, all kinds of spaces. and imagine those spaces could only communicate through limited means. like maybe one\could turn the lights off in the other ones, and that’s it. maybe one has a phone but it only rings like 2 other ones and one of those the phone is hidden and doesn’t ring out loud. some doors open one way, some connect to different rooms at different times, some are locked. now imagine that that entire structure is “you”. what people see is you on the outside, your body as it is now, and some of those people inside can communicate with them, but inside you all experience a complex . imagine how you would talk about even simple things, like what all of you liked to eat.
now here is the hard part. imagine this is not a metaphor. it is literally your everyday reality. not just how it feels, how it is. your hands are wet from the liquids, shaking with exhaustion from holding them in the right form, and you have a balloon or two to hold some of the gas but some leaked and now you (all of you? some of you?) are dizzy and you are handing it to someone who asked for a yellow cylinder. and you got them from somewhere in that complex structure of rooms. you get everything from there. and there is no you really at all. that’s just the only way to say it.
if you feel confused and overwhelmed, that’s actually a really good start. it is actually way more complex and unbelievable than all of this sounds. but this is a bit of glimpse.