Who is the recipient of your wishes?

Curious question regarding “I”

That was the curious question asked by one of my student, “what is the meaning of “I?”, while explaining the meaning of “pronouns …like ‘I’, ‘you’, ‘that’, ‘it’, ‘he’, she’ etc.” 

My centre of thought was suddenly stimulated by his question. So far, I was in the prison of my grammar book. The Grammar book says ‘that which is used instead of some noun, the person speaking or writing… it is a personal pronoun in the first person singular etc. etc.,” I was firmly persuaded that it is the SPEAKER who holds the key for the meaning of the word “I” and the LISTENER holds the key for the word “you”. I had an intuitive acceptance that ‘I-you’ understanding “is there” when two persons encounter each other in many ways. I used to naively suppose that understanding each other is not an isolated phenomenon. It is all about the shared life which is mutually apprehensible.

 I could not think even in my wildest imagination that his weird question will shake me so much.

But, now I can notice, while reflecting, that somehow I have misconstrued and failed to recognize his question because of the obviousness of the word “I” in our daily usages. For my part, it was an undue simplification.

A small indistinctness was hanging over my head, and I was feeling guilty that his curiosity was not illicit, as I supposed primarily. And I, calculatingly, worked out the meaning of “I”. 

With due awe in head, I took a hypothetical example, say, on a particular day and on a particular time, say, 9th January, 2021, 12.33. p.m. the people of the whole world starts chanting the sentence, “I will do it…”, the word ‘I’ will refer to the people of the whole world.  How confusing it will be to say a single word “I” refers to the people of the whole world. Who will be the definite referent for the word “I”?  I guess now, “I” will refer to the ‘people’ of the whole world but, there will be no definite referent for the word “I”. It seems that it will have a changing reference every time one utters the sentence starting with “I…” 

I was now on tight nerve to shelter my way to handle the so called changing reference with some bookish answer, until I lost my path in some quandary. And I began seriously leaving my text book behind. It was an inexplicable problem for me to make myself understand …. It never occurred to my muddled and languorous brain before, and I was supposed to “fly out of the book of the bottle”. I felt diseased …repetitive… but somehow circumspect also. I plunged into the abstruse meaning of the word he has thrown on me…I was wandering into strange land…where all was chaos and dark …disconnected facts… loomed out in front of me …were humming in my head, “oh ! sure !! I am a body. Through my body, I can move, touch, see, hear, taste and smell. My body includes pain, hunger, thirst, tiredness, injury, sickness, fear, apprehension and pleasure. In this way I experience myself.  Similarly others also have the same experience, thus there are innumerable numbers of references for the word “I.” 

Somehow, my argument seemed to me unyielding. However, I moved to another aspect of me not directly visible or definable. I assigned myself the properties of thinking, feeling, reflecting and judging, remembering and anticipating. I have noticed that I am constantly changing and evolving, and become a baggage of a physical body and an emotional bundle of two --making me a person. Being a person means that I have virtues and Vices, contributions and needs, success and defeats too, which I cannot share with others, although I share the word “I”. I am basically good, but I am capable of being bad also. I am neither an angel nor a monster. Being a person means I am a social animal, need connection, recognition and acceptance from others, while simultaneously knowing well that I am an isolated and solitary being. I got nowhere in this paradoxical conglomeration. So I become a crowd of ‘multiple-selves’?, a package of – psycho-synthesis?, a vast assemblage of overlapping events taking place.

Next day I was standing before the mirror getting ready for the school, suddenly something hits me:

I see me in the mirror (subject)

And

I see me in the mirror (object)

I was surprised to see the two propositions before me. Friends !! you can understand the dichotomy of my bifurcation.  Now, I was afraid that my close ones will report to the doctor---“look !! Here is one Mrs. Jekyll and Hyde, please provide her some medicine.”   I was slowly heading towards a tiny “head-pain.”,…  was humming the lines:

I have a body, but I am not my body.

I have emotions, but I am not my emotions.

I have a mind, but I am not my mind.

I have roles to play in life, but I am not any of them…s

I am a Kaleidoscope -- the pattern of which is ever changing. Life and my participation in it, is rotating the long pipe of the instrument. I have no control over its speed -- up or down. Though the glitters of the Kaleidoscope are fixed, but it creates innumerable designs every moment of my existence on this planet. Each and every bit of the pattern evolves with new ‘I’ but unfortunately none of them is the sole “I”, and, regrettably neither can it excludes them all. 

 “I” involves that there is “something” beyond the “grammar, logic and language” of glances. That is, someone who cannot be captured by rules because it is a living being who, among other things, uses, creates and establishes rules and finally breaks them too. Understanding of I-You cannot be understood in terms of grammar and rules. Yes, one should not be obsessed by rules and criteria. It is something Intangible, yet it has cosmic importance.  Look at the fate of the onion that ends with its skin.

Lo !! my friends !! I have been de-personalised !!