Hi to all,
This is your friend. Don’t know how to introduce “myself”. The “my” in me is getting weaker with time thus attenuating the “myself” to a shorter version…. just “self”. So, to a world where “my” comes before “self”, introducing the “self” is not as easy as it looks at the surface. Still, I would take a trial.
I am a face that would go unnoticed in a crowd. I am a face that would hardly impress you in the first rendezvous. I am a face that you would identify in a group photograph only after putting extra strain on our eyes. I am a face that you wouldn’t care to remember for long…..
This should suffice for the introduction, as only faces are introduced, not the person. To know the person, you need to delve deep into him, beyond the limits of a superficial hello or a phony introduction. And going by this definition, its impossible to know a person fully. But at the same time, this statement too holds true that it is not essential to know someone fully. So, why take the tortuous path? Why bother about the finer details when only name is enough? Just say a hi, a hello; help him, ask for help… and its over. After all that is what is required. The whole social networking aims at making our task easier by mutual coordination. And that can be achieved just by our names as our identity. Knowledge of the person becomes secondary.
I guess, by now I have convinced you that its not important to know who am I? I will go a step further and say that even the name is not required. And I do have the famous adage to support me..”whats in the name?” So, please stop bothering about the author’s identity and concentrate on the text.
So, what is it that differentiates “my” from “self” and also, both “my” and “self” from “myself”? The question is graver than it sounds. And to know the answer, we need to know all the three terms. “Self” denotes the soul. It represents the character a person bears and has nothing to do with the name. Contrarily, “my” is the pronoun that replaces the noun, which in itself is the name. So, “my” depicts the name while “self” is the person’s nature, his character, his inner identity. “my” makes him known to the world, while “self” is the inner enlightenment. “Self” is what we ought to know, while “my” is the way others will know us. Knowing “my” doesn’t need effort on the person’s part as it is endowed to him by the world whereas knowing “self” is one of the most tenacious jobs.
“My” stands for the ego that we carry with us. The hindi word “main” literally means “aham” or ego. All the streams of spirituality intend to cause diminution of this ego. The journey starts from “my” and has “self” us the ultimate goal. The whole process has just one objective – to lessen the “my” thus leading to the “self”.
We being mortal, have an innate trait to relate our self to our body. It’s me who gets happiness in merrier moments, its me who laments at opportunities missed, its me who suffers the spasms….. Is it the reality? Let us assume it to be true for a moment. Then, it will be me who will be burned after I die. And since burning would reduce me into ashes, nothing will be left. The complete “me” will vanish into nowhere. The whole existence would cease to exist. But I would still have a bit of place reserved to my name in some faraway nooks of the brains of few people. Just the way Shakespeare and Gandhi have. That brings us to a contradiction. Presence even after death. This fortifies the hypothesis that the trait of linking our body to our self has no essence.
Its not the body that defines us. Body is the veneer that the soul wraps itself with, before taking a lively form. All happiness and revulsions are limited to the body only. The body is given a name for ease of recognition, and that name leads to “my”. On the contrary,“self” or “soul” is beyond the horizons of pleasure and pain. “self” defies the boundaries of time while “my” has a very limited life span. Every “my” comes and lives and then dies, but the “self” stays forever.
Hence my friends, its worthless to attach “my” to our real selves. Although, living amidst so many creatures on this earth necessitates a formal attachment between “my” and “self”. But this linkage is too ephemeral. It stays only till the body remains. Once the body departs,”my” and “myself” cease to exist. What remains is the eternal “self” or the soul. So, let us live our lives to the fullest, but with the cognizance that its only our body that lives.
No comments:
Post a Comment