Who Am I?

A while back I wrote an article for Medium entitled, “The Absurd Good Feeling”. Here’s the link: Absurd Good Feeling   It was about how once in a while, out of the blue, I get hit with this overwhelming “good feeling”. I have no idea where it came from or even why I have it. It just comes on. I assume this happens to other people as well.

I would like to pick up on that theme and expand on it because a lot of my feelings come on like that.

Like others, I have an array of feelings that come over me like sadness, happiness, joy, despair, anxieties, insecurity, confidence, cowardice, boldness and so on, and they just keep coming. Occasionally, a stronger feeling comes and stays a while longer.

My Depression Last Night

Last night I went into something of a depression about my life, the world, other people, you name it. It was all up for grabs. You must know how it is. We get into one of those negative states of mind and it can just start spiraling out of control. It just feeds on itself. Whatever we think about in those moods can all be interpreted from a negative perspective.

The crazy thing in all of this, is that I want to identify with one of these states of mind. Last night, I decided, yes, I am a depressed, despairing and negative person. That’s exactly how I feel and it’s who I am. It might not be great, but at least it’s something solid by which I can define myself.

In the Morning I Felt Great-Why?

Then for whatever reason I woke up this morning feeling great. I felt at peace with myself and the world. My body felt healthy and energetic, and I felt in sync with everything.

It’s not that this sense of well being hasn’t happened to me before because it has. When I feel like this, I lock in on this feeling, and say to myself, “I’ve finally figured the whole thing out. I am in this wonderful state of mind, feeling impervious to any negativity. When it does come at me, it will just melt away in the radiance of my well-being”.

But then of course, something will happen during the day, somebody will say or do something, or some inconvenience that I hadn’t expected will pop up, and then, just like that, I’m out of that great feeling and back into the muck and mire of my daily life.

If We Have Ups and Downs-Who Are We?

So these are the ups and downs we all experience in life. Many of us want to hang on to the good states of mind and get rid of the bad ones, but it doesn’t work like that. We have to accept the bad ones as well. For me, I don’t mind the bad ones, if they would just stick around long enough so I could define myself by them.

The image of the brooding writer or philosopher isn’t such a bad archetype, but of course the good feeling eventually returns and blows the whole thing out of the water.

So, it’s not so much the bad states of mind I don’t like, it’s that none of them stick around long enough that I can say, this is who I am. Since they come and go with such rapidity it’s hard to get a handle on who the hell I am.

 Philosopher David Hume’s View of No-Self

David Hume, the British empiricist philosopher, when attempting to prove there is no self, did a deep dive into himself in search of a permanent unchanging self that would define who he is once and for all. But when he looked inside for his real self, he couldn’t find it.

All he experienced was one damn thought or feeling after another in rapid succession, but he could find no permanent self that was the source of those rapidly changing thoughts and feelings.

An Experiment to Prove We Have No-Self

We can do a thought experiment to prove this to ourselves. First think of an apple. Picture it in your mind. Now think of an orange. What happens when you do this? Did you observe your mind erasing the thought of the apple and then creating the thought of an orange? Hume would say no.

All that happened, was you had an image of an apple, and then when told to think of an orange, the image of an orange instantly appeared. You had no awareness of creating the thought of an orange; it just popped into your mind.

In the same way, Hume says we have no inner impression of a permanent continuous self beneath all those thoughts and feelings; we just experience them one after another in rapid succession.

Applying No-Self To My Shifting Moods

So, applying this to what I said earlier; this permanent self that underlies all our moods doesn’t exist, according to Hume. All I’m trying to do is identify with one of these passing moods, and I can’t because they are all transitory. They come and go leaving me with no unchanging self.

At some level, I know this, even at a conscious level at times. But sometimes those feelings are so strong they do feel like “it”, meaning my true self has finally revealed itself. But alas, just like my negative feelings from last night, this solid negative or even positive feeling eventually disappears.

I think we all are looking for that terra firma, something solid that we can cling to that gives us a sense of solidity and identity in the world. But over and over again I have to relearn, this doesn’t exist, at least not in the “material” world.

Aren’t We Looking For a Self to Define Us?

The material world is transitory. It is constantly changing, so if my thoughts and feeling are tied to it, then obviously they will be constantly changing also. That leads me to wonder if there is any solidity anywhere. Are we like that proverbial leaf in the wind, blown around by forces stronger than we are?

Or is there something more permanent and less solid with which to identify? Perhaps this is where Hume’s analysis goes wrong.

Maybe We and Hume Are Looking in the Wrong Place

The flaw in Hume’s analysis is that the self he is looking for, is the self that is doing the looking. He is looking for a permanent self amidst all the comings and goings of his thoughts and feelings, but he is looking in the wrong place.

What is this identity that witnesses it all and where is it? We will delve into that in more depth in the next article.

To learn more about the magic of the universe: Click this link: The Magical Universe. 

Photo by Ashley Batz on Unsplash