What's it Really Like Being You?

Guest Post by: Sam Blight

“You never enjoy the world aright, till the Sea itself floweth in your veins, till you are clothed with the heavens, and crowned with the stars: and perceive yourself to be the sole heir of the whole world, and more than so, because [others] are in it who are every one sole heirs as well as you.”

—Thomas Traherne

I came into the world, from my own point of view at least, with nothing, as nothing.

I didn’t know what I was like and could only take cues about that from the world around me. I was wired to be like a thirsty sponge for information about myself.

At first, it even took me a while to realize which parts of my experience belong to my body and which parts don’t. This is something I had to learn—how to be a thing in a world of things and to identify as an encapsulated mind. Because it happened at a pre-verbal stage of my development it only dimly forms part of my personal narrative, but I can see from observing the process in others that it must have happened to me too. Because of being unconscious of my “enthingment”, I have assumed that I’ve always been behind a particular face, in a body, fundamentally separate from the world I inhabit. It took me some time but I became convinced that the one in the mirror, the face and body I see there is actually and exclusively who I am

I suggest something like this has probably happened to you as well.

The Face Game