michael-dean-k/

In response to Alex's post here (it is neat that we can go back and forth with two independent sites) ... I also find myself using "you" a lot when I'm writing for myself.

My guess as to why this happens is that a person isn't really a static singular self. Of course we know on some level that we all evolve and change through life. But writing is something that accelerates the sharding, forking, splitting, becoming. When I write "you shouldn't check your email when you wake up" (which I did today), it's as if the person who realizes this (me, now) is different from the person from an hour ago who did not. How could that person lack the clarity and values that present me has?! And so the writer, "the I" of the moment, is something like a parental superego that emerges to steer/synchronize the past/future self. The writer is an insight implementation personality.

There's probably also something to "you" being more abstract and generalizable. Even though personal and relatable grounded writing is anchored in "I," the I also acts as a a blinder, only seeing from a limited, narrow vantage point. And so you can levitate above yourself to see the "yous" and "wes" and how this thing you need to internalize is actually a general principle that anyone could ingest. A "you" is more abstractable.

(...I can still recall this moment in my childhood home, maybe at 18 years old, slightly high, where I remembered, deep in the pantry, that I wasn't thinking, but watching myself think. And maybe that dissociative power of weed is what enables/unlocks abstract thinking...)

The irony here is that this inverts traditional advice. If you're writing personal essays with an audience in mind, the tip is "no second person sermons!" (as in, don't use "you" because it's preachy and it infers that you are lecturing and therefore above your audience). I get that. But when I write purely for myself, I find myself using "you" all the time.

If I really am I collection of selves, then shouldn't I write to myself in "we"? Was Smeagol/Gollum onto something? This is the logical extension of my whole theory above, and that makes me question it. It feels wrong. It also points to the Pessoa/Jung divide. Pessoa saw himself as a cabinet of 70 pseudonyms, each with their own personality and literary voice and fictional backstory. Jung's main concept was "individuation" that all the selves should strive to integrate into a single higher Self, a unified personality.

What if I framed it as, "I won't check email in the morning anymore"? Is this preferable? Does framing it in "I" mean that the current you is the same you that sinned not long ago? Does this framing require you to take responsibility? And so is that act of framing the past self as a "you" actually an act of avoiding responsibility? Was Pessoa just a shifty bastard, a brilliant coward to not be emulated?

A new prayer I wrote to loop: "Καιρὸν θεωρῶ, ἀγάπην σπερῶ.” It stands for “Kairos I behold, Agapae I will sow,” or in less Greek terms: “I recognize the moment, and will bestow love as a gift.” Each half mapped to an inhale and exhale, sort of like the Lord’s Prayer (in attempt to internalize and associate the prayer as something as automatic as breathing). The first half is on being perceptive, the second on being generative. You watch with gravity, then act with generosity.

Pronounciation:
(1) kai-RON
(2) thay-oh-RO
(3) ah-GAH-peen
(4) speh-RO

On each word:

Kairos is about seeing a particular moment in a particular way, that if acted upon, will change the course of history. It jolts me out of a passivity, about accepting things as they are, and instead to see freshly, to see everywhere the third doors. Christ’s first words in the Bible (after baptism) are, “the kairos is fulfilled."

Thay-oh-RO means to behold, to contemplate, to observe, to truly see the potential of a circumstance. It’s not a casual looking, but a penetrating sight. It’s a perspicacity of vision (an unraveling). (Note: it ties to “theory” but original this word was a way of seeing, not an abstract hypothesis.) It doesn’t mean “I’m an opportunist, but the full weight of my attention is applied to the present. There’s discipline to it, and it’s framed as a sacred rite, an act that changes you.

Agape is the highest form of love. Eros is the lowliest love, the desire to subsume the other into you, passion. Philios is a brotherly love, a reciprocal friendship, a give and take. Agape is a parental unconditional love, where you hope to nurture the other into their maximum potential. This is the origin of this prayer, because it feels like a word that can applies to everything; to mundane moments, to relationships, to creative works, etc. In many important ways, agape is a form of surrender. Agape is the defining word of Christ.

SPAY-roh is “I sow,” but  speh-ROH is “I will sow.” The future tense adds a quality, as in, now that I’ve seen the moment, I commit to sowing love. The word “sow” is specific and special, because sowing comes from spraying seeds, meaning you give love in massive volumes, with no conditional reciprocity, no expectation for return, knowing that one in a few might blossom into something. There is even a “Parable of the Sower” in the New Testament, about broadcasting generously without controlling where things land; you throw seed and trust the ground. Love is something to scatter freely, without a guarantee of return. This spray definition also ties into my latest conception of the root cosmological urge, in a working essay titled “the universe is a cumshot.” As in, God is not a craftsman with a plan, it’s more like the universe is an explosion of matter, and God is the binding force, the emergent order that fuses, harmonize two things for them to transcend to a higher phase of matter. 

Compared to the Lord’s Prayer, which is petitionary (give us, forgive us, lead us, deliver us), asking for repentance and nourishment from a higher power, this one is more about our own responsibility to be like Christ, to have Christ-Conscioussness in each frame of our existence. It’s about internalizing the divine pattern. The Jesus Prayer is a devotional prayer, but this is a participatory prayer. This is “theosis,” becoming by grace what God is by nature.