Some years ago I recall gliding along the path of idealistic youth, most thought related to pragmatic things influenced by the decisions and value judgments made for me by others. I was clearly young, inexperienced, and certainly more interested in exploring the “forest” as opposed to the “trees”.
My opinions were cluttered by erroneous, unlived, and manufactured facts.
Then one day I was confronted by a strange uncertain “no-person” in my life: “I” was confronted by “Me”.
Now there’s quite a difference between the “me” of myself and the “I”. The “I” is only my shell- hollow, with little feeling, totally incapable of relating to the individualistic thoughts that tend to pour through my open mind.
In contrast, the “me” is my soul, or it is what protoplasm is to a cell. “Me’ is the ingredient which completes the “I” and creates a complete poem, without the “me” one only sketches, seldom ponders, and is dependently content to breathe the air around him, stagnant or otherwise!
And that random day I realized I was only pretending to be a “living” person was the day I was confronted by “me”.
Together, the “I” and “me” guide one to complete understanding of himself, both external and internal. Just as Siddhartha had to live out his own life to acquire “om shanti” instead of through book learning (impossible), the recognition and eventual unification of “I” and “me” make the reality of human self-experience plausible.
And so this is Robert Feldman today- still retaining those fragments of his idealistic (still unproved and untested) youth, but always testing and inquiring, probing and feeling, and living through each of his many thoughts and adventures.
Life has become no longer a “mind thing”. It is now more a “body thing”- a down to earth realistic thing. And it has become truly a living organic thing.
My “I” has magically linked with my “me”, and together they now form this substance of a complete living human being.
11/1969
Paterson