My Journey to Discover and Understand Me — My Body, My Self, and My Person
About Me — The Three Me’s
This is a set of four short stories that describe the key events within my life experiences that have given me the insights and conscious awareness to come to discover, know more about, and better understand the three me’s. That is, firstly, my actual human body, which I can only imagine. Secondly, I, my actual self, here within my actual mind, this moment “now” of my awareness, thought, and will. And thirdly, the physical person of myself that I remember within my past experiences and plan for within my future. I provide some context by starting with a very brief autobiography of my person, and I conclude with a summary of what I have learnt.
A Very Brief Autobiography
I was born in 1964 in England. My interests at school were largely in the areas of mathematics, science, and engineering. I did a master’s degree in electrical engineering and business at Imperial College, London, graduating in 1987.
My primary hobby throughout university was motorsport. Any conscious interest in matters relating to emotions, values, ethics, morality, my own self, and a more general understanding of my mind and its knowledge came much later within my experiences. That said, I did get an A in English Literature O-Level at age 16, which was a total surprise to me, and I did love going to the theatre while at University in London during my early 20’s. The playwrights Anton Checkov, Tom Stoppard, and Dario Fo come to mind. So there must have been something more than science, engineering, and motorsport going on in here back then, but clearly, I had little idea as to what it was.
I have spent most of my professional life and career in the semiconductor industry, in various roles in design, applications, management, marketing, and business development. I moved to Silicon Valley, California, in 1994 and have lived in this area ever since.
A Stranger’s Life
It was a Sunday morning in the late 1990’s. I awoke, alone, in my recently bought 4-bedroom ranch-style house on Dailey Avenue in South San Jose. I had nothing to do on that day. No reason to get up. And suddenly I seemed a stranger to my own self, living the life of a stranger here within my own mind.
I had done virtually nothing of substance in my life. I had been a good and obedient boy, obeying my deeply caring, loving, and somewhat controlling mother. She cooked. She cleaned. She washed. She worked. I ate. I dressed. I went to school. I learnt different academic subjects. I obeyed my teachers’ requests and their demands, and I wrote words and numbers on paper to prove to them that I had been listening to and understanding them. I did well in exams.
I applied the same philosophy when I started my career. I designed electronic circuits on paper and on computer screens according to the requirements of my management. I listened to customers and wrote letters and notes to them, and reported their needs and concerns to my management. My life seemed to be solely a matter of exchanging words and numbers with others. Exchanging information with others. And in return, these companies I worked for gave me special symbolic tokens. Sterling and dollar currencies, physical tokens of money, the language of numerical measures of relative value. A bank gave me a bundle more of these tokens, called a mortgage, both in credit and debt. Strangely, this seemed to add up to nothing. So now I owned a house, and I owed a mortgage, or a lot of negative value. Whatever that is. And I owned three cars too.
Yet I had little to no idea how to design, build, or maintain a house. I had some idea how to design, build, and maintain a car, and did a little of my own maintenance. Yet mostly, I made up sequences of symbols for other people, was given tokens of currency in return, and then lots of people all around this globe did real, hard labor for me, or sold me goods and property, which was the result of lots of real, hard labor, when I gave them these symbols. They had built me a house, and they built me three cars, and they maintained and repaired them for me, and most of them had no idea who I was. And all I did was do what I was told, and read symbols, and listen to symbols, and write symbols, and speak symbols, and get paid in symbols. I was an information exchange. A human language machine.
And suddenly, on a random Sunday, sitting alone in my bed, with nothing to do, I am strikingly aware of this bizarre stranger’s life that I am living, this stranger within my world that I recognized as this person I know of as Martin Squibbs. A person living a life of exchanging symbols. Doing pretty much nothing of substance, really. It was so confusing. So disturbing. And yet so liberating too, to somehow be free of, or at least separate from, this person. To all of a sudden be aware of this stranger in my life, rather than being this stranger in my life. Yet I wasn’t really sure who or what this stranger was, nor who or what I, myself, observing him, really was either. Yet I was clearly becoming aware that, in truth, he and I were , somehow, different realities.
We are different realities here within my own mind. He is actually a part of my experiences, a part of my past. And he is a part of my future too. He is always in here with me, in my past, and in my future, all around and about me, here, in the presence of my own mind. He isn’t I, my own self, my conscious being. I am a different reality. He, and all his symbols, did not and do not determine who I am, myself. Indeed, I, myself, determine him. What I actually do in the present becomes the person within my experiences that he is; this person that I remember within the past events of my life. And so far as my future is concerned, I get to plan out his activities, and so decide the sequence, or order, of what he does, in the present, as I come to know it now. And so I plan futures for him, and this is how I, myself, get to decide who, in my latest experiences, he, Martin Squibbs, comes to be. Who this person becomes is a consequence of my actions in the present. A consequence of the future I freely “will” in the present, to “become my past”, here and now within my mind.
A Poem From a Familiar Stranger
Again, the late 1990s. Again, at home, in San Jose, and alone, in my bedroom. But now, a Sunday evening. Work was looming. I had to start another week of living this stranger’s life. Stressed. Anxious. Disturbed. Lonely. Desperate. For no good reason, really, other than I had no clear idea what I myself was, who this stranger in my past and my futures was. A stranger who my actions in the present, now, was creating within my experiences. Why was I creating the life of this stranger? Why was I creating this lifetime for myself, and becoming this person of Martin Squibbs? Well, I suppose, come to think of it, that was actually a pretty good reason.
The system I was somehow existing within was a mystery to me. I was a cog within many symbolic processes that I didn’t understand. I had a notebook in my hand. I wanted to write a poem. Express my feelings somehow. And then I watched my hand move. It brings me to tears recalling it in here. This had never happened to me before. It has never happened to me since. I have never had my muscles move to anything but my own conscious and intentional will at any other time within this lifetime of my own experiences, other than at that time. And I watched my fingers write the following poem. It was an extraordinary and unique event in my life.
I wandered to the tortoise
I couldn’t catch the hare
He raced towards his demons
With a fever I didn’t dare
He looked so damned inviting
He had a face of gold
I couldn’t read his writing
I couldn’t be so bold
I ran from such reflections
From demons far and near
I raced towards the tortoise
And engulfed his every fear.
A Walk in the Park
South San Jose. Late 1990s again. Some random weekday evening after dark, with a clear and moonless sky. Alone. Mood calm, relaxed, and thoughtful. I decided to take a walk in a small park a little way from my house, Cahalan Park. The air was cold and fresh. Autumnal.
I stood in the middle of the park. A few people were walking quietly in the distance, their black outlines barely visible. A couple and two other people with their dogs. The flickering of kitchen, living room, and bedroom lights surrounded the park. The living room lights turned off, and the bedroom lights turned on, as the time to sleep grew closer. The outlines of planes travelled far above me, coming to land in San Jose, with their lights tracing the sky like slow-moving shooting stars.
And suddenly I filled with excitement and understanding. I could suddenly imagine the couple, the dog owners, the people settling in for the night, and the thousands in the air, travelling the globe, as being all just like me. Here, in their own present moment of a living human self, within the presence of their own human mind. Dealing with their own worlds, their own here and now, within their own minds. Dealing with their own experiences (i.e., factual past events) and creating their own future plans. Dealing with that person within their own experiences that they become by their own actions. Each of them individually wondering within their own worlds of experiences and future plans, wrapping up these experiences and plans with their own unique mix of joy, excitement, love, fear, hope, and despair. And, hopefully, finding some value and purpose within all of this.
And I realized everything, all that actually exists, exists in the present. The Earth. It’s oceans. It’s continents. All of life on Earth. All human life. All actual human bodies. All actual human minds. And within each actual human mind, a human self, existing now, just like me. And within each mind exists each individual self’s growing memories of their perceptions of realities beyond them. That is, their own experiences. Experiences we interact with as this phenomenon of remembering the durations of the factual past physical events of our own life. Each of these selves projecting future events from these past events. Each of them infusing this physical past and future with their own emotions, opinions, beliefs, expectations, scientific theories, philosophies, and all manner of values. Each of them distinguishing this world of knowledge into many meanings, and representing these meanings as auditory and visual events (spoken and written words), words which are meaningless symbolic information. All of this present, on Earth, alive, changing, in motion, in emotion, in each of these minds, within each human head, filled with these phenomenal worlds of knowledge. This reality of a human self, in a human mind, interacting with all this knowledge, creating this reality of a world in mind, this moment of conscious being now, within the presence of these actual living human bodies of life, within the presence of the universe, on Earth.
I’ll never forget that feeling. Awakening for the first time to being present to my own presence, to my own self, within this presence of my own mind, to discover and gain awareness of my own world, being realized within my own experiences and other knowledge. And to believe in and be aware of everyone else’s presence too. Billions of human selves, souls in the presence of their own worlds, here and now, in their own minds, in the presence of their own bodies, in motion and emotion, on Earth. Bodies of human life, part of billions, if not trillions, of bodies of life on Earth.
My word, how remarkable, beautiful, and mysterious is the presence of life. Earthly motion and emotion, living on Earth, containing these minds and our selves within them, these human selves of living memories, wrapped up in emotions and value. And I am one of these mysteries. How remarkable and mysterious I am; each of us is. This truth seemed almost beyond my belief. I am wandering and wondering through this container of these factual perceptions and experiences, and my knowledge of opinions, beliefs, theories, and philosophies, wrapped in my emotions and values. A phenomenal and virtual world, all within this tiny space of my human mind. A lifetime of knowledge, here and now, in my head. A huge and beautiful place in such a tiny space.
An Angry Man
I had moved into a condo in downtown San Jose in 2000. Otherwise, the scenario for discovery remained much the same. I was a Saturday morning, as I recall, a year or two into the first decade of this twenty-first century. Again alone in my bedroom, a day with nothing scheduled, nothing to do.
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And I was angry at my boss, Alfredo. He was interfering with everything. Going directly to my team. Changing their tasks. Changing strategies and plans. Not discussing them with me. Ignoring me. Undermining my authority. I was furious with him. I took a pillow and started to beat the bed with it, venting my anger and my hatred.
And then I stopped. I realized I wasn’t angry with Alfredo at all. He was actually in France. Most likely out with friends, enjoying life as he always did. And most likely not giving me a second thought. I was being angry at a “physical person” I was creating here in my own mind. A person I was creating by remembering my visual perceptions of “actual Alfredo”, perceptions which transfer via my sense organs from Alfredo when he is present. These experiences of Alfredo are stored here, as my factual past, within the presence of my own mind. And Alfredo is this person whom I formulate from these sensations into the visual object of this person of Alfredo, from these experiences of him. And I was doing the same with my auditory perceptions of him. Remembering my auditory experiences of “actual Alfredo”. And formulating the voice of the person of Alfredo from these auditory experiences. This formulation being the act of listening. So I was formulating the visual object of Alfredo and the auditory voice of Alfredo and conflating them into this person of Alfredo, here and now within the presence of my own mind. And this person I was formulating in here was getting all muddled up with my own opinions, beliefs, and expectations, creating the emotion of anger in here. I, myself, these experiences of Alfredo, my beliefs, my opinions, and my emotions were not working well together at all, here in my mind, on this Saturday morning in San Jose.
And while all of this was going on in my head, actual Alfredo was probably drinking wine in a Pizzeria in Aix-en-Provence, joking and laughing with friends. I laughed out loud at the absurdity of my own foolishness. And I realized that maybe I was out of my depth at work. I was a young and inexperienced manager, not sure of what I was doing, and insecure. And maybe Alfredo was trying to help me, support me, give me some space to learn, and be a role model to help me learn. And then I realized that it wasn’t just Alfredo who was one of these visual and auditory “people” whom I create from my stored perceptions (i.e., experiences) of their actual realities, and remember, and formulate, and muddle up with my own beliefs and expectations, here within my own mind. Everyone, every person I know and remember, is actually one of these people, too. Every person I know is, in truth, a formulation of the stored sequences of my perceptions of them. And I was reminded that even this person of “me”, Martin Squibbs, is one of these people too. This formulation of my own person, the one I become as a result of my own willful action.
And I also realized that these visual and auditory perceptions from which I create Alfredo, and from which I create my own person of Martin Squibbs, and from which I create all people, are within the factual truth of my own experiences. These stores of my perceptions are the realities of my factual truths of my knowledge. My perceptions of actual realities beyond my mind are factual truth. Physical experiences are captured and stored sequences of perceptions. They are the factual truths of the knowledge of my world in mind, and they exist here and now, within the presence of my mind.
What’s more, I had just completely changed Martin Squibbs’s personality and intentions, along with Alfredo’s, right here, all by myself, here within the past factual events of my own mind. The perceptions, the physical experiences, hadn’t changed. All that I had changed was my beliefs and opinions about these perceptions within my physical experiences. I had reformed my inner and mindful experiences (i.e., my opinions and beliefs), as they relate to these physical experiences. I had dramatically changed my view of Martin Squibbs, the person in my mind I have the most physical experience of (i.e., the most perceptions of), and spend this moment of my life with, and must deal with, whether I like him or not. Indeed, I had better start thinking more responsibly for him, to ensure I make better future plans for him, so I may come to find this person within the durations of my factual past events to be better behaved, and my opinions of him to become ones that I come to like and respect a little more. What on Earth had Martin Squibbs just been doing, trying to beat his bed to death with a pillow, because he was hating the imagined intentions of a formulated person within his own mind. Intentions he himself had made up. Intentions which most likely were misconceived and wrong.
And I laughed out loud again, as I, myself, rediscovered the person of Martin Squibbs, as separate to I, myself, here within my own mind. A person who actually is found within sequences of visual and auditory perceptions, within my physical experiences, captured in here from the present actions of my own actual body, according to my very own will. A person who is the lead actor in this play of my own life, a play I remember, formulate, observe, and listen to, from my own growing experiences. The one and only person within my mind whose behavior I can actually change and control. Within this present moment of a human life. Within this moment of my own world, here and now, in the presence of my mind.
Conclusion — The Three Me’s Within My Mind
So what have I learnt from my studies of my mind’s physical and emotional experiences above? I have learnt that all that exists, all that is real, exists in the present, as present moments filled with activity, filled with motion. And I am one of these moments. The presence of a world of knowledge, now.
And I have learnt that “me” is in truth three actual realities in the present.
The first me is the actual presence of my entire living human body. This body of life I get to bring motion to, from within its mind here within the presence of its life, here on Earth. Willing it to motion via my procedural memories, as I perceive the resulting perceptions of it via my actual sense organs, and as my mind captures and stores these as the most recent sequence of the perceptions of my body, within my physical experiences. Yet this actual body is purely in my imagination. I know nothing about it. All I know about is my perceptions of it.
The second me is this actual reality of my own self within my mind. Truly me. An aware, thoughtful, and wilful self, while awake, here within my actual mind, within my actual body, within my actual skull, behind my actual eyes, and between my actual ears. This human self, this consciousness, being now. This second me is who “I” actually am.
- The power of my awareness, an ability to interact with all these physical experiences in here, and remember and observe my lifetime. And an ability to interact with my emotional experiences too, and create my opinions and beliefs and theories, and values, and futures, and other types of knowledge I make myself in here as a result of my own thought.
- The power of my thought in being able to create my own knowledge. Like my futures, my theories, my values, my opinions, my beliefs, my philosophy, and my languages.
- The power of my will, to bring deliberate motion to the actual my muscles within my actual body, via my procedural memories. Or so I imagine.
The third me is found within my experiences, as the perceptions that arrive in my mind, from my sense organs, originating from the first me above. Perceptions coming from my own actual body. Captured and stored sequences of these perceptions that are entering my actual mind from my actual sense organs, from my actual body’s reality in the present. And I formulate this me by remembering these perceptions of my own body from within my own experiences, and formulating these perceptions into durations of events which create the physical phenomenon of this person of me within my own mind. The factual me. This is, in truth, the physical body of me, as an integration of all of the formulations of the different perceptions below, captured and sequentially stored perceptions of my own actual human body, here within my experiences.
- The object of the visual perceptions of my actual body.
- The voice of the auditory perceptions of my actual body.
- The smell of the olfactory perceptions of my actual body.
- The taste of the gustatory perceptions of my actual skin.
- The pain, touch, temperature, and pressure of the somatosensory perceptions of my actual body.
- The balance and spatial orientation of the vestibular perceptions of my actual body.
- The spatial positioning of the priprioception perceptions of my actual body
This is also the physical me that other human selves come to know, in their minds, from, at least, the visual and auditory perceptions in their minds which also come from the presence of my actual body, when they “meet me”. My “common sense”, if you like. When we meet each other, we share common perceptions of each other’s actual human bodies. We have a “common sense” of each other. A common factual truth within our worlds of knowledge.
And we must also consider language and information. Because this physical and sensational me must not be confused with these meaningless symbols I have created as information within my mind, which represent the meanings of knowledge here within my mind. Meaningless information which I make into artificial information beyond my mind, for you to capture within these sequences of visual perceptions within your visual experiences, here within your mind, and decode with your meanings of the English language into your knowledge, so that you may hopefully understand, here within your mind, this knowledge of my world which I seek to convey via these ordered and meaningless visual symbols, here into your mind. Language is a description of the meanings of this world of knowledge, which we hold separately within each of our own minds, which we then encode into these meaningless symbols of information. It is this meaningless information that we communicate between our minds, meaningless symbols encoded into visual perceptions (the written word) or auditory perceptions (the spoken word) as the actual means to get this information between our minds. Information encoded into futures, willed into perceptions, captured into experiences, and then decoded separately within each of our minds, according to the meanings of a given language within each individual mind.
And we must also consider the nature of scientific knowledge versus philosophical knowledge within our minds. Scientific knowledge relates to our growing understanding and ability to describe the formulation of the durations of our events from these sequences of perceptions within our physical experiences. It is knowledge and understanding of only our physical world. It is our world of our knowledge and understanding of our shared and common perceptions of actual realities. It is the domain of facts and provable and proven theories derived from facts. Whereas philosophical knowledge is our growing understanding and ability to describe the nature, form and substance of actual reality. Not just understanding the nature and context of our perceptions and their physical experiences, and these durations of events we formulate from them, but also the nature of the rest of our actual mind. Our emotions. Our values. Our beliefs and opinions, and ideas and hopes, and fears. And our own selves. In truth, philosophical knowledge is our quest to come to know, understand, imagine, and describe the nature of all of life, and all of nature, and all of the actual universe as a whole, beyond our actual mind. Our philosophies and philosophical knowledge can cover a lot of ground, and even more space.
So, knowledge of our physical world (our events) exists within the knowledge of our philosophy. Yet there is a further type of knowledge that must exist within our philosophy. Our knowledge of the actual. For we each exist as an actual conscious human self, here within our mind, and we are interacting in here with our actual emotions, and we are creating our own memories according to our own values. And so, we as an actual reality in here are interacting with actual physical experiences, and memories of our actual emotions, and memories of our own actual imagined events (fantasies, fictions, futures, projected pasts, theories, beliefs, and opinions). Our knowledge of philosophy consists of our knowledge of our physical experiences (and the events we formulate from these), our knowledge of our actual emotional experiences, and our knowledge of our own self’s actual imagined events and other knowledge (fantasies, fictions, futures, projected pasts, theories, beliefs, and opinions, being all that we value). And there is still one further area of philosophical knowledge. What we imagine the actual universe to be, in this present moment, outside of our actual mind. And the closest we can get to knowing this is our perceptions of it. This stream of perceptions entering our mind. This reality is the first and the last physical brick, and every brick in between, that is the foundation for our physical world. The world that science studies and comes to understand.
And one subject of scientific knowledge that should, for sure, be of great interest to all of us is neuroscience. Neuroscience is the study of the physical brain, the physical brain being the object of the mind, which we formulate from our visual and somatosensory sensations of minds here within our physical experiences, here within our mind. So our study of the brain, as the physical object of the mind, here within our actual mind, is giving us physical insights into the structure, contents, and changing realities of our own mind. Similarly, physical consciousness, as the object of our actual self, gives us physical insights into our own actual self, our own now, here within our own mind. It is giving us insights into this awareness, thought, and will that we actually are, here within our own mind.
Of course, you do not have to believe these words of mine. This is just my philosophy. You do not have to believe, here in your mind, that you and I are three me’s. One physical me formulated from the actual sensations of my body, and two actual me’s, beyond factually knowing. Because we cannot prove to ourselves that actual reality exists. Only one of our me’s offers facts and proofs of our existence. The physical and sensational me. This person of me. This me is virtual and representative. He has no agency.
That said, if you have got this far, and taken all these meaningless shapes I have left on some Medium server somewhere on Earth for you to find, into your vision, and captured them into a sequence of visual perceptions here in your mind, and seen them as the shapes that they are. And if you have identified them as English words, and decoded them into your English meanings, and converted all these meanings into some knowledge within your mind. Then surely, you must agree, you have created a 4th “me” here in your mind. A fourth Martin Squibbs, as some philosophical idea you hold here in your mind, “now”, as some knowledge of a mix of the three me’s I have shared above. A fourth “me” that I have absolutely no agency over at all. A fourth “me” for you to do with as you wish. And if you wish, by all means, move your fingers, and create some meaningless shapes on a Medium server, preferably in English, to share your thoughts on this 4th “me”, with me, myself, the second me. I’ll be interested to learn about how you are treating him and what you think about him, here in your mind, now.
