The tingling sensation of witnessing your own existence
I sometimes have a tingling sensation, a soft and warm chill flowing from the top of my spine up to my skull, when looking at someone using something that belongs to me (a physical object or something I created, like code).
Do you too?
This sensation is something I have experienced since I was a kid. One occurrence in particular I remember, is when a good friend of mine stayed at my home for a week or two (we were living in different cities). One day, as I was showing him all the drawings in my school agenda, drawn by both school friends and myself, he offered to draw one too. Or maybe I asked him to? In any case, I gave him a pen, and he started drawing something in the school agenda. He was sitting cross-legged on the carpet of the living room, and drawing on the coffee table. I was a bit setback, my back against the sofa. The room was silent. As I was watching him, both of us silent, I noticed how focused he seemed. He was very focused, drawing something in an object I used everyday and that was kind of intimate. He was using an object that was mine.
That's when I started getting this chill in my spine and skull, a soft and warm chill like the one you can get when taking a hot shower, or when your crush lightly touches the back of your neck. It's the warm chill that makes your hairs stand up. It was coming in soft waves. It made me feel so relaxed, so serene.
While drawing, my friend sometimes spoke to me, telling me what he was drawing, or asking me what I would like him to draw. I found that the less I interacted with him, and the more he was focused on drawing, without paying attention to me, the more I could maintain this tingling sensation. It was like this sensation was triggered when I was looking at someone using something of mine, from a physical and emotional distance.
I couldn't really explain it, but it felt like I was witnessing my own existence. Indeed, someone that isn't me is using something that is connected to me. This thing could probably not exist without me, or not the way it exists now, and this other being is using it, focused on it. I felt like this somehow proved that I exist, and this is how I explain why these situations give me this warm and pleasant, physical sensation.
I remember other occurrences, like when a high school friend was practicing his pen-spinning skills using my own customized pen (looking something like this). Yesterday, I got it again while reading code from a random person on GitHub making use of one of my Python libraries.
This does not happen often, to the point that most of the time I forget about it. Since I forget about it, I never try to force it either, and that's probably for the best. When it happens though, I do try to maintain it as long as I can, because it feels great.
For a long time, this was kind of a cute secret, since I had never told anyone. Since then, I told a few close friends about it, but none of them seem to experience the same thing.
Do you?