I would like to describe myself to you, so that you may know me. The difficulties in doing so are many, however. I was born 26 years ago into an intelligent mind, but with a mild social anxiety that can sometimes hamper effective communication. Know though, that I have done well enough for myself over my life, by any measure common to our society. You, on the other hand, have lived a life completely different from mine, a life I can't even begin to guess about. This makes true communication difficult at times. Perhaps I've already alienated you by acknowledging my strengths. Language is a very powerful tool, for with it one may communicate thoughts from their consciousness to another, and hear them reflected back. But one never really knows for sure what the person on the other end heard, for words carry subtle differences in connotation from person to person, and each person's values will make them synthesize the thoughts they hear differently from how the speaker intended them.

So let it be known that I understand this to be a difficult undertaking, and I'm well aware that in the process you may judge me to be insane or delusional. Knowing these things, it would be far easier for me to stay silent and avoid that risk. Being as I have put myself out on the limb to communicate these thoughts to you, I ask that you lend me your open mind until I have said my piece, and then you will of course be free to make of my words what you will, as you always are.

I would like to describe myself to you, but to do so accurately and completely would take far more room than this digital representation allows, and far more time than I have to live. For I am an extremely complex being, and I do not yet understand myself fully. I'm in the process of learning, as you are. I'm learning about what I'm like from many sources - most immediately obviously from the experiences I've gone through directly since my birth, my memories. But I've also learned many things from my DNA, things like how often to expel carbon dioxide from my lungs and replace it with fresh, oxygen-rich air, or that I have a better chance of survival if I either fight or run when I perceive danger, or that breasts are good. I've learned many things too from listening to the thoughts of other beings, both through the words they say and by extrapolating their thoughts from the actions they take.

None of these measures alone gives me more than a morsel of understanding about myself. In many memories from my life I've been too confused or overwhelmed with in-the-moment emotions to fully trust my syntheses of those situations. Many of my genetic instincts are less applicable since the advent of society, such as the instinct that makes fatty and sugary foods taste delicious long after you've had your healthy dose. Everything I've learned from other people has been colored by that person's imperfections, brought about by their incomplete understanding of themselves. So the things I've learned from other people about how I could be, or about the nature of things, are similarly untrustworthy.

But, by triangulating between these experiences over time, and by reflecting my hypotheses and conclusions against others' though communication, I'm beginning to piece things together. Things about how I want to live my life, things about what I'm like, things about the peculiar predicament we've found ourselves in - knowing that our bodies will die, that eventually this entire solar system, nay this entire galaxy, and potentially the entire known universe, will die.

We pretty much all want to be happy, but not a lot of us really have any idea what will do that. We like to feel good, because that brings happiness, but take any one thing that feels good, and if you do it constantly you'll eventually end up either not feeling so good, and you'll die before doing the things that bring lasting happiness. Every physical pleasure cloys eventually, be it food or sleep or intoxicants or sex or luxury, and it only leaves us as miserable as we started, often causing great misery to others along the way. It is only in the balance and moderation of these things that we achieve any lasting pleasure, that we can feel good about ourselves over a long period of time.

Most of us know this at some level - we certainly recognize that drinking in excess leads to a hangover the next day, can cause irrational and ill-advised behavior, and that doing so constantly can cause one to lose their friendships and their life. And yet, I've had my share of too-drunken evenings and regretted behavior, and maybe you have too. Hey, it felt good at the time, right? I thought if I moderated myself I would somehow be taking away from my pleasure, but I was thinking on too short a time horizon, and ignoring too many 2nd and 3rd order consequences of my actions, the things that bring lasting pleasure. Maybe you have the opposite problem. Maybe you force yourself into a life without pleasure, and never relax enough to enjoy yourself, driven by a feeling that you're not worth it, or a fear of the route of excess. Considered, healthy moderation is difficult for almost all of us. But if we all know it's unhealthy, why does it happen to all of us?

I think the main problem is that we think that in order to act selflessly towards ourselves and others, we need to lose something, have something taken away. We have the golden rule, and we say that, "virtue is its own reward," but we don't live by these proverbs. If we are an able-bodied healthy adult standing in the rain to hail a cab, we'll often take that cab from the elderly or feeble, even though we later feel it to have been wrong. At times, we look at the world around us and we see powerful people preying needlessly on the weak, and we say, "If I don't constantly guard myself against others, if I don't become the hunter, I might become the prey. If I don't own a killing machine, I put myself at risk of being killed by someone who does." The reason we think these thoughts is quite logical - from the perspective of one living thing, they're true! And yet… and yet… we still feel badly about them. We still bemoan great suffering and death, we still call the era where we implemented a selfish feudal system the "dark ages," and we still cherish those (Jesus, Buddha, The Beatles) who taught us to live in a more loving, moderated way. Why?

Because at our core, all we want to love and be loved. Some of us have a very limited form of self, where the only way we can love is to love ourselves, and the only way we can be loved is to be loved by ourselves, but essentially that's what we're looking for. When we want food, we get the true pleasure in that not from the taste, but from the knowledge that we gave ourselves this thing that tasted good. When we have good sex, we get the true pleasure in that not from the physical sensation, but from the knowledge that we were good enough to attract a partner who wanted to please us. Even in the most violent and depraved pornography, the men constantly ask the women "do you like that?" They're too selfish to listen to whether she actually does like it or not, but they still desperately want her to. Because in the end, we all know that what actually brings about the most, lasting pleasure, is to optimize not one individual's experience, but the experience of the entire system. But we don't live this way.

I'll give an example to illustrate this point. Theft is pretty generally recognized to be an ugly, harmful activity, and yet it is also a common occurrence throughout the world. How can this be? Because the thief doesn't fully appreciate the impact of their actions. They're creating pleasure only for themselves, and don't appreciate how much more damage they're causing in the long term not just to the victim but to the victim's loved ones over time. Or they do see that damage, and they harden themselves anyway, because they think it's necessary, creating long-term guilt and self-hatred. In short, they either do not see or are too afraid to care about how it creates a negative reinforcement loop which eventually weakens all of humanity. We've implemented various consequences for theft which strike home to the thief on a shorter time-scale, like imprisonment, and that has some modicum of success, but it doesn't strike the root of the problem, which is that the thief connects viscerally only to the short-term individual pleasure, and not the long-term collective pleasure. I believe that we can change this negative reinforcement loop and create a better world, simply by believing a simple concept.

The simple concept is that you and I are the same person. Now, if you've gotten this far, right about here is where you'll probably start tuning me out. Please remember what I said about communication and learning, and keep an open mind for a second. Certainly over the course of time, our understanding of the nature of other selves has changed. Until very recently, "respectable" scientific white men argued that people of other races didn't even experience pain or misery "like I do," which today sounds utterly ridiculous to all but the most hate-blinded. Even today, we're unsure about the extent to which other animals experience feelings and emotions "like I do." Certainly most mammals respond negatively to loud noises, and positively to soothing noises, but can they be said to react to anger or love? Most 8 year old girls would tell you that they do, but what does an 8 year old girl know? If they don't have emotions though, how do I explain how a well-trained dog will be loyal and trustworthy to its master, but an abused dog will become fearful and aggressive? Similarly, we say that all our will and emotion is derived from our brain, but a plant still loves the light, will still grow around an obstacle to get to the light. To what extent is that a genuine desire, and to what extent is that just a chemical reaction? Is there a difference between those things? Consider this as well: through gravity, even two rocks, the least active form I know, left in a vacuum will, over enough time, eventually seek each other out.

So what about "me" makes me myself? After exploring the fundamental core of what we're seeking in life, and exploring the fundamental core of what other forms seek in life, there seem to be only shallow differences between my basic being and that of others. So what makes "me" myself? Just my memories over my life? We've already concluded that these memories don't sum up to me, they're just tools I use to learn. Just my ability to conceptualize and create language? What about the other mammals? They seem to want the same basic things I do. Just the fact that I have a brain? What about the tree seeking the light? It seems to want what I do. Just the fact that I'm alive? What about the two rocks seeking each other across the vast emptiness of space? At the very least, I think we can say that we don't fully understand what it means to be "me." At the most, I think we can say that "I" am in everything I've ever seen or known, that I am the entire universe.

"But of course you're not!" you may say. "You were born in this body, and that's all you've ever known, and so that's all that you are." This is true as well. But consider sunlight, reflected through a prism, shining onto a wall. Everything that made up the white light traveling through space is still there on the wall. It's just been broken up into different pieces across space, each vibrating at a different frequency, and projected to appear as a two-dimensional shape positioned on the wall, instead of the three-dimensional particle-wave we know it to be. Does the red light remember being white light? Certainly you can put it back together with the other light and it knows how to act. I don't remember my carbon atoms being forged in the heat of ancient suns, but we know it to be true. I wonder, will I remember how to be the earth once I become part of it again?

So, although I look and act differently from you, I see the things in my life which have caused that to be true, and I know that those things aren't me. For I despise many of these things, and yet, I love myself wholly and completely. At many times I've made bad decisions, and yet I'm always trying to do good, always trying to make the right decision to the best of my ability. And you are too. Because although you've been reflected onto the wall of 3-dimensional space, vibrating at different frequency than me, it's the same consciousness, the same desire to love and be loved (even if the implementation of said desire is highly flawed), that is common to all of us, and to everything we've ever observed. It is love that we truly are, and all else we perceive is merely the shadow we cast. So I will live in a loving way, to the best of my ability. And when I stumble, I'll see it as the weakness in my form, and I'll laugh good-naturedly at that weakness, for it is not me. And when I succeed, I'll know it's my better nature prevailing, and I'll reap the benefits and give thanks to myself for remembering to love. And over time, I will learn who I am, and I will truly know love. And so, by serving, I will live as a king, and so, by serving, we can all live as kings. For that which I give to you freely is nothing taken from me, and that which you give me freely is a great gift to me.

I would like to describe myself to you, but to do so accurately would take the entire length of existence. In fact, it is.

TL;DR

I am me telling myself I am me.

I am love without end, loving myself, without end.

I am the universe.