When we look at the classic (dead) languages like Greek and Latin, the ‘I‘ still is in the verb, it is not a separate word. In the conjugations of the verbs we can find about whom is spoken. We still find this in the roman languages like Spanish – a living language. In French, German, English or Dutch for example ‘I’ has become a separate word.
We don’t always use the word ‘I’ with a full awareness. It is like a kind of reflex, also in the inner life of thoughts. But there is a definite perception of the ‘I’, and the saying ‘I’ is based on this perception. For the concept of life it is of great importance how we look at the ‘I’.
If the ‘I’ is spun by the brain, something that doesn’t really exist, but that is a kind of temporal aid to distinguish myself from the other, it means that he who feels like a special ‘I’ will have to stop with this feeling someday – because the body dies. Everyone will, at some point in his life, have the reflection, the question: If the body, and therefore the brain decays – when dying – and if the thought ‘I’ is a kind of secretion of the brain, then this egoism through which we try to distinguish ourselves so energetic is a rather senseless thing. For it is a perception that is passing by…
For our happiness in life it is important to ask the following question: How does my ‘I’ actually feel? If I neglect the theories about these questions for a while, I perceive that I am an independent individual, who has a name by which I can be called, but to whom I refer to as ‘I’. When one has reached adulthood, and decides to start some studies, along with it one gets to know nature, life, the cosmos better – depending on the kind of studies one starts.
However, when we draw our attention back from the outward and turn it to the ‘I’ it seems to flee for this regard. The more one tries to fathom it, the more it becomes invisible. As long as one stays unified with the ‘I’, and doesn’t think about it, one has a clear I-perception. There is no need to reflect on it or discuss this. But in the moment that one says: I want to get to know my I better … one seems to grasp in a nothingness.
A paradox arises. There is nothing in the world with which one is so familiar than with the own ‘I’. But it seems impossible to objectify this knowledge. The moment one tries it, one experiences that one knows the I the least of all existing things. Of course, we have our biography, our feelings, knowledge, ideals, fears, doubts, sympathies, antipathies… We can go to the psychologist to get to know this all better, or we go to the psychiatrist for a psycho-analysis, to fathom our unaware psychic depts…
By ourselves, with the ability to understand, we don’t achieve much in trying to perceive this wonderful being that we are and to whom we all say ‘I’. It seems to drift away as soon as we want to think it over.
Then one turns back to the theories, the philosophical, the psychological, the historical ones.
But by doing that the immediate perception of the ‘I’ is already gone again…
The ‘I’ doesn’t show itself in the inner mirror … or does it?
The significance of the ‘I’ by Mieke Mosmuller
