As early as I can remember, I have had questions. Questions seem to be as much a part of me as my fingers and toes. Actually, more so, for I can imagine life without body parts, but not without questions. Perhaps human beings are questioning animals.1 Yet in my early years, most of my questions took a back seat to more pressing concerns: a force inside that propelled me to seek adventure, romance, excitement, money, power, success, achievement. This force, these drives (which I experienced as ‘”givens” in my early years) occupied the time of my early life. I am probably not different in this from most of my fellow beings.

In my middle years, however, a gnawing uneasiness began to creep around the edges, the old song “Is That All There Is?” echoing in the breezes of my mind. A number of people I respect have had similar experiences, either when initial goals were met, or when an inner voice whispered that the goals of early life were no longer appropriate for the time that remained.

So somewhere along the way in the middle of my life, I began to ask in earnest: Is my life primarily about a bigger house, a more expensive car, a better TV screen, one more interesting trip, or even being rich and famous? Is the purpose of life to have one more experience, to mark one more activity off the endless “To Do” list?

The Many Different Currents of “Me”

These questions brought me face to face with the mystery of “me.” There are so many different urges and desires – and at any given moment any one of them can take over and become the center of attention. But in the next moment, or the next, another can just as easily take center stage. So which one is “me?” I noticed that in one moment I could be joyous, and soon after quite irritated; I could be serious one minute, and playful the next; deeply caring toward a friend, and inconsiderate toward that same person a moment later; I could be loving, and then selfish; gentle, and then harsh; and on and on. And the most fascinating part was that I usually did not know which “me” was going to show up in the next moment of my life.

I might be feeling terrible, the phone would ring, and a friend would tell me some great news, and I would be filled with delight. Or I would be happy, and out of nowhere an old fear would pop into my mind, and I would feel terrible. Who is in control of this process? Who is making the decisions about what I will be feeling in the next minute, or the next hour. Is it all random, or do “I” have some input into this process. Since my feelings are absolutely central to my experience of life, this question is of great importance.

In the same way, I began to recognize that I had no idea what I was going to be thinking in a minute, let alone in an hour, or tomorrow. Where do these thoughts that are constantly arising in my mind come from? And of utmost importance, can “I” affect them, have some choice in the matter – or am I merely an iPod, playing some preprogrammed playlist? And if I am an iPod, where does the playlist come from?

Thought Experiment: The playground of your mind

Ask yourself: Do you have any idea what you will be thinking in one minute? In one hour? Tomorrow at noon? How does what you will be thinking in the future happen? Where do all these thoughts that are always popping up in your mind come from? And what role do “you” play in the process?

This is not to say that we cannot concentrate for a moment on something we choose, for we certainly can. But studies have shown that the length of time the average person can concentrate is shockingly small – a few seconds for most of us. After those seconds, another thought breaks in, and we may or may not get back to the prior thought. Because of this, one strong indicator of the likelihood of success in life is how capable one is at returning the mind to a chosen topic, and returning it there over and over in spite of all the other thoughts and feelings that keep arising. Even for those who are good at this process, however, there is another problem: how one feels about oneself cannot be controlled in this way. You might be very good at concentrating, yet hate the topic you are concentrating on. And even for the most focused among us, how the topic to be concentrated upon will be chosen is not answered by our concentrative ability, but resides within a cloud of mystery.2

The Radical Notion of “I”

As I go through the day, there are definitely recurrent themes that run through my thoughts and feelings. This is a large factor in my sense of continuity as “me.” But to a great extent, I don’t select these themes – they are just there in me. And I don’t seem to have much control, without enormous practice, over when any one of them will arise, how long it will stay, or how it will relate to the many other themes that are also a part of me. All this leads inevitably back to the question: Who am I?

If you think about it for a moment, the existence of this thing called “I” is pretty mysterious. Where did it come from? How did it come to be? As far as we know, galaxies and stardust and atoms don’t have a sense of an “I.” Then there is the question of what is included. Does it include my unconscious currents, or just the conscious ones? Is every “I” an island unto itself, ultimately alone to fend for itself in a competitive universe? Or does my “I” include my cultural history and web of relationships? And where is this “I” located? You can examine as many brain cells as you want under a microscope, and you will not find an “I.”

Looking to my own experience, I simply woke one morning, many years ago, and found “I” was here. I don’t remember exactly when this occurred, for it feels as if I have been here forever. I know this feeling of foreverness is not logical – all the history books tell me a lot went on before I was around. But still, when I woke one morning back at the age of one or two years (or was it more like three or four), my awareness of myself seemed to coincide with existence itself. Thus even though I believe the historians concerning all that went before, the feeling persists that existence itself and I have something in common.

Maybe it comes down to consciousness. What is this mystery we call consciousness? Where did it come from? What exactly is it? How did a bunch of quarks get together and begin to think, remember, and organize memories into stories?

So one thing seems pretty clear: whoever “I” am is intimately tied to this thing called consciousness. Without it, there would be no “me” to experience my existence. And there would be no “me” to think about and understand whatever world there is out there to study and understand. Nor could there even be modern physics, if Nobel laureate physicist Eugene Wigner was right when he said, “It is not possible to formulate the laws of quantum mechanics in a fully consistent way without reference to consciousness.”

Given its importance, one would think that after thousands of years of investigation, we would have a pretty good understanding of what consciousness is. Yet not one of the great philosophers, psychologists, scientists, spiritual teachers, or wise mountain folk I have talked with or read through the years has given an explanation of consciousness that is fully satisfying, or that a majority of my fellow beings can accept.

Wherever “I” came from, and however it is defined, I wake up each morning, and here “I” am. It feels like the same me, although biologists tell me that there is not one single cell present today that was present when I was two years old. Or twenty. And what I am thinking about and organized around is radically different from when I was four or six or ten. And yet it still seems like “me.”

In the present moment, as I begin my day, there are always tasks to be done. Things I feel I must do, or would like to do, or have committed to doing. But how did these things get on my list in the first place? Who put them there? When? Do they control me, or do I control them? Is my list of tasks “me?”

The best understanding I can get to through this rational train of thought is that my “me” is a very large assortment of urges and desires, thoughts and feelings, images and intentions that are constantly overlapping, running into each other, competing for “my” time and attention. One minute I want an ice cream cone, and another minute I want to lose weight. One minute I want to accomplish great things, and the next I want to watch movies and party at night and sleep late the next day. One moment I want a relationship that has great sex, the next moment I want a relationship with someone who shares my life values and goals, and the next I am wondering if celibacy would make my life easier. And as all these currents overlap and collide, “I” have very little idea about – and usually very little control over – which feelings or thoughts or themes will pop up next.

Oh, I can concentrate and take control of the process somewhat, but there has to be a set of goals or values or intentions that “I” decide are the most important around which to take control and direct the concentration. But how do I select these goals or intentions that are really important, when I don’t know who “I” am? It begins to feel like a dog chasing its tail. And it begins to seem that Ramana Maharshi was onto something important.

Searching for Answers

Propelled by my questions, one day almost thirty years ago I found myself at a workshop in Switzerland with the day devoted to, of all things, fairy tales. When I was growing up, fairy tales were not considered very relevant in my home, and they certainly were not considered significant to an adult’s life. So what could this possibly have to do with me? Therefore, on that fine spring day, I wasn’t looking forward to the program. Should I skip out and explore the beautiful Swiss countryside? And what about romance? Thirty years ago, travel brought out an urge for romance in me. (Come to think of it, it still does.) But before I could make my escape, things took a turn for the worse – at least it seemed so at that moment – for it was announced that the world expert on fairy tales who was supposed to conduct the workshop was ill. She was to be replaced by a man I had never heard of, and no one in the group seemed to know much about. Not an auspicious beginning for an already uninviting day.

As I sat there mustering my courage to walk out, considering whether I had the guts to overcome one of my old demons (the self-doubting voice whispering, “What will people think?”), a small, quiet British gentleman appeared unobtrusively in the room: our substitute speaker for the day.

Without much of an introduction, he began to read a fairy tale in a low, flat voice – an uninspired beginning. But since he had begun, I felt trapped, for I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. He finished the reading, and began to ask about the possible meaning of the fairy tale in our lives. And then the strangest thing happened. Under his quiet, skilled guidance, the room was soon bursting with energy – with ideas and feelings and personal connections pouring forth from everyone – myself included. And the room remained vividly alive all day. It was a truly magical moment.

A magical day with fairy tales, you ask? Yes, fairy tales. But before you rush to judgment about this experience, consider the fact that fairy tales have been used to shape the values and mold the lives of we humans since recorded history began. This, of course, does not prove that fairy tales are relevant to our lives today. Nevertheless, after my day in Zurich I began to consider this question for myself.

As I thought about it, I realized that stories of all kinds had played a larger role in my life than I had suspected. For instance, stories about George Washington and Thomas Jefferson, Abraham Lincoln and Benjamin Franklin had formed my early views about politics and government, about the interaction of principles and power. Stories from the Bible had shaped my beliefs about what was truly important, about how I should act, about what the major issues of life would be. Stories about sports heroes, political heroes, and business heroes had given me images of what I might be when I grew up. Stories, especially movies and novels, helped form my early views about romance and relationship.

Stories about real people that I knew – family members, family legends, people from my own town – made the possibilities of life more real and accessible: if people I knew, or people from my family or home town, could do such things, then perhaps I could do them as well.

During my teenage years, stories told among friends and schoolmates about what was “in” and what was “out” dramatically affected my values and beliefs. And stories of rebels – people who saw things differently from the accepted norm – made me aware of the problems of my world, and gave me images for how I might attempt to change things if I chose to try.

This reflection on the importance of stories led to the growing realization that my very identity – who I believed myself to be – was in one sense the product of a story. In a very real way my conscious identity was simply the continuing story I told myself about who I was, framed by the story I told about who I had been, and perpetuated by the story about where I was going. Isn’t it the same for you? The stories we tell ourselves about our lives create our understanding of who we are and what our lives are about.

This observation does lead to several difficult questions, such as: Can we simply decide to tell ourselves a different story, and thereby change ourselves? How does our internal story relate to the story others tell, and to whatever the “real” external reality might be? What is Truth, anyway? (But these questions are jumping too far ahead.)

As with our understanding of ourselves, stories are equally important in the way we relate to and understand others – and they us. Doesn’t the story that others tell themselves about us create their understanding of who we are? Consider, for example, the difference in the story about you that would be told by a person who likes you, versus someone who is angry with you. Compare the two stories in your mind, and you begin to get a sense of how one’s identity with others is created by the stories they create about you – and most importantly, by the selections they choose to focus on from among the vast array of facts that are available about you. (Again, questions arise. Which of the stories is really true? Which of the descriptions are really you? But these questions are jumping too far ahead of the story. We are not yet ready to consider Truth; much more circling of the questions is necessary before there is any chance of determining whether such a thing even exists.)

Did Stories Create The World?

During another adventure in my middle years, I attended a conference in Boston entitled “Storytelling, Myth, and Dreams”. For three days a group of storytellers told humorous and teaching stories to a small group of captivated listeners. As I listened to these stories of wisdom and compassion, I began to reflect on the role that stories have always played in human culture. It became increasingly clear that as long as human beings have existed, stories have been with us. In every land, there have been stories of how the world began, of how each culture came to be as it is, as well as stories of the tribe’s relationship to nature, to others, to the gods.

What was the purpose of these stories? Were they simply designed for entertainment on a winter’s night around the campfire? Were the teaching stories designed only to educate the young? Certainly everyone would acknowledge these two functions of the world’s great stories. But is there more? Do some of these stories carry hieroglyphic meanings that we somehow intuit, yet find it difficult to unravel.

As I reflected on this question, I thought about the epic stories of India, of the American Indians, of Scandinavia – and of many other cultures – and I began to see that for many people in the past, the answers to life’s most important questions came from stories. Anyone who reads – or is lucky enough to hear told by a true storyteller – the powerful Zen, Jewish, and Sufi teaching stories begins to see that these stories are designed to help people wrestle with the central questions of life. Or consider the great plays of the Greeks, Romans, and of Shakespeare. These plays create in me the distinct impression that I am in the presence of someone grappling with life’s most fundamental questions. And if I bring to mind the numerous parables and stories in the Bible, I definitely feel that the storytellers are trying to convey what they have learned about the most important questions of life.

The more I thought about this aspect of story, the clearer it became that stories have always shaped the beliefs and carried the values of human culture. The great stories were used constantly by our forbears to understand who they were and what life was about. Awakening to this reality, Muriel Rukeyser declared, “The universe is made of stories, not of atoms.” This thought sounds strange at first. But as you think about it, consider the possibility that the world you see, the way you organize the information that arrives in your brain, comes largely from the assumptions you have already made, based upon the way you have already come to understand the world. Tracing it back, don’t your current assumptions and understandings arise to a great extent from the stories that molded and shaped you as you grew up? If you consider the quotation in this light, it begins to make a great deal of sense.

This understanding also arises in part from one of the crucial insights of philosophy in the last three centuries. The brilliant Scotsman David Hume, followed by the philosophical giant of the 18th century, Immanuel Kant, developed the idea that the world we see is not some hard, objective fact, but that what we see and experience is greatly determined by the assumptions and beliefs we hold in our minds at the moment of each new experience. We do not just record facts from the outer world. Our minds select the facts they want to register and organize them in a sequence meaningful to us, based primarily upon what we currently believe. Thus what we believe about reality at any given moment greatly determines how we will experience and understand the next thing that happens to us. In this sense, the mind creates the reality that we see. This also means that another observer might well be experiencing a different reality from the one we are seeing.

Thought Experiment – Which Story is True?

Imagine being in a class where you are given the assignment to tell the story of your life as a great success. The next week, the assignment is to tell the story of your life as a failure. Could you organize the facts of your life to tell both stories? Which one, then, would be true?

So it keeps coming back to this identity question: exactly who or what is this “I” that is telling the story of my life to myself? Returning to my own experience, as I said before, I awoke one morning and discovered “I” was here. Next there came a number of years in which I was being “raised” and “educated.” I remember a large number of experiences from this time, and friends and family tell me many stories about it. But the funny thing is, the stories they tell are often quite different from the way I remember things. Many events they consider important do not exist in my memory at all. Other sequences are put together in quite different ways from the way I remember them. (I can see how hearing their version over and over has affected the way I remember things, yet even with this conditioning, great differences remain.) And most important of alll, the meanings they attribute to events are sometimes radically different from the meanings I experience as my own.

However it was through this confusing process that “I” got here, it is clear that my conscious ego “I” was not in charge: Who I usually think I am I was not directing it – didn’t seem to have much say in the matter. Yet gradually through this process, or perhaps in spite of it, “I” began to have an awareness of myself as a conscious individual. By that time, however, there were many hopes, fears, beliefs, habits, expectations, and anxieties attached to my “me” that I sure didn’t consciously choose to put there. They were just there. They seemed as “given” as my “I.” How then do I know which are an essential part of me, permanently attached, and which are removable and exchangeable options? Do I take all these fears, hopes, habits, beliefs, expectations, and anxieties as givens, as “me,” or do I question each one as to whether it belongs?

All this really does relate to what I will do today. I have my “To Do” list, but should I follow it – or make another? How do I decide if the list I already have fits in with the purpose of my life? For that matter, does my life have a purpose? And if so, how do I know what it is? Is it separate from my existing hopes, beliefs, desires, and habits? Or is there “something more,” something beyond the currents that make up the “me” that I find here each morning, the me that was mostly formed by enculturating stories through a process that I did not consciously choose or control?

Amidst all these questions, where do I look for answers? How do I sort out all the conflicting currents within myself? This is where the “On Being Human” operating manuals I have seen so far are a little sparse, or else pretty dogmatic. (Cultures and religions have traditionally stepped in to provide rulebooks to answer life’s questions. But are they correct? And if so, which among the many on offer are the correct ones?)

For myself, there are many different places I have found that are valuable to explore in looking for possible answers:

There is Art, for we humans have been trying to express and understand ourselves through art for at least 70,000 years.

There is Science, for it is the premier tool we have discovered and developed to understand the nature of the physical world we find ourselves living in.

There is Culture, for it is the framework that gives us our initial understanding of, and the lens through which we see, ourselves and our world.

There are Values, with which we have each been inculcated, and with which we wrestle our entire lives, since they provide limits within which we can pursue our drives, goals, ambitions, and dreams.

There is Intuition, by which we come to know things in a moment of insight that brings into focus an understanding that previously did not exist.

There is the Spiritual Dimension, which attempts to speak to and about the ultimate concerns of life, and there is Religion, an organized system of answers to life’s spiritual questions.

There is Relationship and Community, the ways we are embedded in, defined by, and spend the majority of our time engaged with others.

And there is the Wisdom of the past, hints and guesses handed down to us by thoughtful men and woman who travelled on this journey before.

Then there are the disciplines by which we have tried to systematize and organize our ideas about the world and ourselves: Philosophy, Psychology, Economics, Sociology, Anthropology, etc.

As far as I can tell, each of these currents has value and importance, as do the stories we tell ourselves and each other as we try to make sense of our lives and our world. Exploring these many streams, and the overlapping waters between them, is the beginning of any understand of what it means to be a human being.

1 But then again, perhaps animals have questions. How would we know?

2 Thoughts similar to these must have been what lead Soren Kierkegaard to muse: Where am I? Who am I? How did I come to be here? What is this thing called the world? . . . How did I come into the world? Why was I not consulted? . . . And if I am compelled to take part in it, where is the manager? I would like to see him.