"I am" in the English Language

No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world.
-Robin Williams https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/words


For the Love of Words

I love words and I love to understand their meaning.  My mother tongue ( my only tongue lol) is English so I am fascinated with the English language...it's beauty and its limitations.  I believe our language reflects our culture and our culture reflects what we think and believe as a people.  The words we use then can reflect what we believe. 

The Limitations of the English Language

"I am sick!"  "I am afraid". "I am lonely." "I am a doctor."  "I am a photographer."  "I am a writer." 

We tend to use that "I am " a lot don't we, in the English language?  We tend to identify with roles, ideas, experiences,  thoughts and feelings as if we...who we really are...are those things. But we aren't those things are we? 

I, for example am not sick.  How can a person "be" a sickness?  If I had colitis for example...would it sound okay for me to introduce myself to people I first meet, "Hi.  I'm Colitis, nice to meet you?" "Or even, "Hi.  I'm Influenza.  What?  You're Influenza too?  Weird, what are the chances of that? We have the same name."

I can have an illness...more accurately...My body  can be experiencing the symptoms of a sickness  but I cannot be "Sick. " Yet so many of us accept that temporary experience as our identity by adding the "I am" in front of it.  We become sickness in our minds where our twisted version of reality exists. We share it and it becomes a part of the collective mind set. Sickness takes on a real and potential  part of our beingness (in our minds only).

What about if I said "I am afraid." or "I am lonely?"  Again, can I be a temporary emotional experience?  Can I introduce myself to a crowd of people and say,  "Hi, I am frustration and I am here to talk to you today about slow drivers" ? I can feel anger; I can experience loneliness but I cannot be anger or loneliness.

Yet there we are with that big permanent marker scribbling "I am" in front of those emotions so that we become them in our minds. We cling to temporary and fleeting experiences as a part of who we are. Tomorrow, I may get up on stage and say, "Hi, today I am peaceful and I would like to talk to you about forgiveness." How do we explain the permanence of  that "I am-ness" then?

Can you change your name that fast?  Are you Sally one hour and Tom the next?  Talk about the Split personality again.  Emotions are so temporary and changeable.  So how can  we attach "I am" to them when those two words signify eternity? And what happens when we do...we become lost in them, overwhelmed by them, powerless to them...because they are not just passing by like leaves on a stream but we see them as a part of who we are.

What about the roles we take on?  Can we be those things?  Sounds better for sure, when I introduce myself as "I am So and So and I am a photographer."  That makes sense right?  Yet, is it?  When I say I am a photographer...I am saying that is who I am...It is not just what I do even though it is all about what I do. Roles are action words with a twist.  Each of the  roles require  an action + an  "or" or  an "er." Do they not? I write but I am not a writer.  I am so much more than  a play on an action word, aren't I? I am so much more than what I do.

The Sacredness of "I am" in other Languages

I am in many eastern languages has a very eternal and sacred connotation to it.  There is a passage in  Exodus, written in Hebrew that gets translated to English as, "I am Who I am.  This is what you are to say to the Israelites,: 'I AM has sent me to you.'"  Exodus 3:14 NSV   How can you get more sacred, more eternal than that?  Yet we take those two words and plop them in front of words like sickness, emotion, what we do.  Does that make sense to diminish them in such a way?

I am that (So hum) in Sanskrit sums up the eternalness of who we are beautifully.  I am That...which is sacred, which is eternal.  So why on earth would we diminish the potentiality of those words  by saying something like , "I am angry?"

The English language limits us, removes us from who we really are and keeps us stuck in the temporary and the perishable. Despite its beautiful poetry, English tends to be ego's language, doesn't it?  Hmm

Just some food for thought.

All is well