First reactions to my Yale essay- "let us get to know you better"

Here's a first draft of my untitled, untrimmed supplement essay/common app essay.
Immediate reactions?

I'm up in the woods at home in my head, walking the trail and smiling. A drifter, I glide at a regular pace, but here the path starts to change. Smooth, solid dirt turns to unsettled rock, so I look from the sky to the ground...

...and there's a bug in the way.

This is a development. I'm lurched out of my hyper-idealized daydreams of an epic pilgrimage and left a little flustered, pause mentally and reconsider my situation. I'm backpacking, I can see, but now I've stopped. This Daddy Long Legs caught me off guard. About a foot in front of the arachnid, I stop walking. It stops walking. I frown.

I can tell that my self indulgent journey can't continue until I deal with this other being. I need to make a choice now. I wake up Brain again, wait for the juices to start flowing, then present my query: Do I keep walking and let the cruel boot of death fall on this lowly arachnid? Or do I spare the energy to walk around it?

"You should kill it," Brain answers. "I mean, if life is really that precious, then you're in deep already from eating that steak for dinner and using that Purell to clean up afterwards. It's that bug's own fault if it doesn't get out of the way. You know. Survival of the fittest and all."

The Daddy long legs sits there. It looks like it's quite content with itself.

"It's probably not," Brain corrects me. "It's not like Daddy long legs can experience happiness or the other higher sensations; it's a jumble of atoms, a gene delivery mechanism designed to find the path of least resistance to sexual success. You should just kill it. No sweat."

This all seemed reasonable to me Such is usually the case with Brain. Another voice, though, Brain's alter ego, Doubt, speaks out here: "And if it could experience those higher sensations? Like pain?"

"Ok, well, then maybe I'd think about it a little more. But that's not likely. I don't even know for sure that other human beings have those feelings. The only irrefutable evidence I have is that you can feel happiness, that you can reason," Brain replies, referring to me, the self. "Knowledge of anything outside one's own mind is fallible."

Theres a short pause. Maybe Brain is finished? But I wait a moment more, and Doubt speaks up again: "And if everyone did have those feelings? If the fact that you didn't know they had them for sure didn't change that they weren't there?"

Brain sounds a little surprised to be encountering such resistance; he'd had the run of this place up until that bug showed up. Brain tries to tie up the argument quickly with some brown nosing of the self: "It still wouldn't matter. You can only experience your own happiness, right? Humans are all motivated by self interest. When people help others, they're getting what they think is the greater good of virtue for themselves by giving up the lesser goods of honor, or pleasure or whatever else. The self is king. Such is life. Right? Right."

There is another, longer pause. No response from Doubt. Then Brain continues,

"So you should just kill it."

A short pause, then...

"But does perception of the self necessarily guarantee the existence of an ontological self? Does the irrationality of perception preclude the synthetic a priori truth necessary to establish the causal relationship between "foot falling" and "dead spider? What is truth? What is? What if? What would Socrates say?"

This was becoming stressful. Doubt had used the word ontological. It was time to bring this to an end. Clearly, Brain couldn't overcome Doubt any time soon, nor could the question-talking Doubt give me any sort of guidance. So where was I, the contemplative, paralyzed journeyman to turn for guidance but to the most cliche source of all, Heart! Heart threw in a little bit of pity for the poor ugly almost-spider, and a little guilt for Brain and Doubt's self absorption, and I was on my way again. The arachnid would live! Today, excessive rationality would not prevail. Today, there would be no grand display of egotistical nonconformity, no solipsistic validations. Today, a victory for the unpretentious, thanks to a large dose of Doubt and a very helpful Heart.

Wow! This is so unique. If only we could all give life to our thoughts .
" where was I, the contemplative, paralyzed journeyman to turn for guidance." - should probably read," where was I, the contemplative, paralyzed journeyman to turn TO for guidance."

GREAT PIECE

Very good indeed. One small suggestion - maybe it would be nice to make the phrases like: 'A short pause, and then..' in italic font - it would create mystery ;)

thank you both!

riskatun, the correction has been made.

ace, great suggestion. I think that works very well.

here's a "final" draft. It still lacks a title... any ideas? I've got minor concerns about flow, but I'm mostly worried that I lost a lot of my "voice" in paring the essay down to 500 words (Yale says they want the essay to "sound like you.") Thoughts?

I stop walking. It stops walking. I frown.

I'm lurched out of my hyper-idealized daydreams of an epic pilgrimage. What was I doing again? I've got a backpack on, I see, around me are some pretty trees, and I'm tired. I'm hiking! Right. Good job, Brain. But now, a big, mean Daddy Long Legs is rudely obstructing my path.

What to do? My self absorbed journey can't continue until I deal with this other being, so a choice must be made. I turn again to the still slightly flustered Brain, then present my query: Do I keep walking and let the cruel boot of death fall on this lowly arachnid? Or do I expend the energy to walk around it?

"Kill it!" Brain answers. "If life is really that precious, then you're already in deep for eating all those shrimp last night. A jumble of atoms, a gene delivery mechanism, that's all it is. It's that bug's own fault if it dies. You know, survival of the fittest!"

Sounds reasonable. Brain usually does. But then that other guy, Doubt, Brain's alter ego, chimes in: "But won't that hurt?"

"I don't know. I can't," Brain retorts. "All knowledge comes from sensory experience after all, and you could never directly sense something else's feelings. You can only see signs, like twitching limbs, that indicate what feelings might be there. Just kill it!"

There's a short pause. Is Brain finished? I wait a moment more, and, surprise, surprise, Doubt creeps in again: "So you should step on people too?"

Brain, a true know-it-all, becomes indignant. He tries to close the argument quickly: "Sure. You can only experience your own happiness, right? Humans are all motivated by self interest anyway. When people help others, they're exchanging the lesser goods of honor or pleasure for the greater good of virtue. The self is king. Such is life. Right? Right."

Another, longer pause. No response from Doubt. Then Brain continues,

"So just kill it!"

A short pause, then...

"But does perception of the self necessarily guarantee the existence of an ontological self? Does the irrationality of perception preclude the synthetic a priori truth necessary to establish the causal relationship between "foot falling" and "dead spider? What is truth? What is? What if? What would Socrates say?"

This was becoming stressful. Ontological? It was time to end this. Clearly, Brain couldn't overcome Doubt any time soon, nor could the question-talking Doubt give me any direction. So where was I, the contemplative paralyzed journeyman, to turn to for guidance but to the most cliché source of all, Heart! Heart threw in a bit of pity for the poor ugly almost-spider, some guilt for Brain and Doubt's self absorption, and I was on my way again. The arachnid lives! Today, excessive rationality would not prevail. Today, there would be no grand display of egotistical nonconformity. Today, a victory for the unpretentious, thanks to a large dose of Doubt and a very helpful Heart.

That was terrific!
Only thing I saw AT ALL:
This was becoming stressful. Doubt had used the word ontological. It was time to bring this to an end.

Be wary of your tenses.
Try This was becoming stressful. Doubt used the word ontological. It was time to bring this to an end.