State of Being

I’m staying awake these last few nights but I don’t know what I’m waiting for. I’m waiting for something to happen, I think, waiting for a forward step, for the stakes to be raised just a little more. How, I don’t know, but I feel I am on the edge of something. I listen again in my mind to some abstract subtleties and the shapes of big words going clunk clunk clunk on their way down my ear canal. Halfway down they are interpreted and I can only hope I construe them accurately. Sometimes I need things spelled out for me. Sometimes I misunderstand the words, sometimes I misread the context. Sometimes the combination of the two confuses me, and some times I am afraid to assume one thing over another.

If I were a letter and all the world some ancient alphabet, I would be that rune with five different, fragile meanings, defined not by itself but by the symbols that come before and after it. What do I mean? I don’t know, it depends on what you mean. You go first, then maybe I’ll be able to tell. I am something all my own and yet I am defined as well by my context. How is anything it’s own thing unless contrasted against it’s surroundings? Isn’t it context that establishes the relevance of anything? How could I possibly be defined without it? Would I exist apart from anything if everything was the same? I could be, certainly, but would I be anything in particular? So my context changes and thus what it means to be myself also changes, while simultaneously I stay exactly the same. Somehow they are separate, what it means to be, and the being itself. At least it seems so to me sometimes.

I fall into such musings because of some personal conundrums of mine. For example, it seems to me that who I am in essence exists differently within the context of my body than it might if it dwelt in a different body. While I believe in an integrated, whole-person philosophy, sometimes it seems that my body and I are separate entities tied together by unfortunate circumstances. I am lively, adventurous and active. I love to run and move and climb and explore; I love to see and do new things. But my body likes to sit inside, though, and frankly be rather boring. The two of us are often at war; we care about such different things. I care about people and relationships and experiences and understanding and involvement in the world. My body cares about rest and storing energy and avoiding the discomfort of fatigue and pain. We seem to be two different people grafted together in skin and bone and brainstem. We are conjoined twins with very different dreams, but we’d never survive the separation surgery. At times it feels as if we exist begrudgingly toward each other; a loveless marriage of body and soul. There are times when we get along and I feel free of its weight, but the separation is always there, a rift between us somewhere inside.

It makes me wonder, what is it that makes me? Am I what I feel I would be separate from my body, or am I the two of us combined? Is my true self a boisterous and fun-loving person because that is the way I was before my body made me more subdued, or has my true self become a more subdued person because that is how I have now been forced behave? Who am I, in essence: my “soul” alone, or an integrated combination of my physical self and immaterial self? I know this is somewhat of a classic question, but the contrast seems all the more bright to me. In theory I would say that an integrated body and soul makes one who they are (to put it very simply), but in practice it is difficult to apply the concept to myself, considering how very different I seem to feel from my body.

But we compromise, my body and I, and we do alright compared to many other body/soul relationships. We are dysfunctional, we admit, but we have seen worse. Many bodies are far more frustrating than my own, and in that way I am lucky. But I still wonder: does my body hide and suppress the “real me”, or has it become part of my true self? Can I exist apart from the context of my body? Or has that context become a defining feature of my true, essential self?

Answer me, all ye philosophers and seekers of meaning. Tell me who I am.


.