Today I did my upper body workout at the gym and as usual, afterwords I ran a few errands in the neighborhood: stopped by the ATM; picked up a few items at Trader Joe’s; and had dinner at the Burrito Shop–walking all the way. That’s one reason I love this neighborhood, and how I was able to sell my car to the DMV last November (but that’s another story.)
I was having my usual fiesta salad with added guacamole and salsa fresca–no dressing, no meat (I seem to have become a vegetarian, but that’s another story), smothered in mild salsa from the salsa bar–and was sitting at my favorite table facing the window to the street. A person walked by whose appearance elicited a humorous comment from my brain, and the parts of this brain that have the job of constructing the ongoing narrative of Who I Am immediately rejected the comment as inconsistent with the current version. “Who knows where that came from,” they said, “billions of inscrutable neural interactions were responsible for that.” (I use the plural deliberately. There are numerous sub-personalities that make up Who I Am, each with an appropriate set of narrators, but that’s another story.)
It’s easy to deny responsibility for thoughts like that which are unsavory, but it occurred to me as I was sitting there, that really, all the thoughts that emerge in consciousness arise from equally inscrutable sources. It’s a bad habit to claim responsibility for the ones that are acceptable under the current definition, and to reject those that are not. The “I” of the self-narrative is no more responsible for the “good” thoughts, than it is for the “bad” thoughts, but that habit is deeply embedded.
A prominent version of my self would like to instill a new habit: that of maintaining constant awareness that each thought that emerges in the brain is of equally mysterious origin. There is no conscious access to the processes that produce those thoughts that appear, and this particular “I” would like to make that an ever present part of its reality.
I may not have enough time left on the planet to acquire such a habit, but we seem to be moving in that direction, if ever so slowly.
(If I could trust you to remember that Who I Am is a fiction, I could use ordinary speech and avoid all these awkward locutions, but I can’t even trust myself, and so the clumsy reminders…)
Bug Finds Poppy, or Vice Versa
It’s just so beautiful I can’t stand it. Here’s another one:
Is It Just Me, or Is It Us?