“I” is a verb; self -- an on going activity;
body is a noun; a man’s physical self  --  a genetic, done-deal;
a man’s personality-self however, is forever  --   a-work-in-progress,
which is carried out by endless story-telling --  about oneself.
 

Even amongst the ordinary, periodic note is made regarding humans’
irrepressible urge to incessantly talk about themselves,
commonly followed by the mumbling of such words as:
vanity; ego; self-centeredness, and so on,
but as is the ever present case:
life has things so arranged in the general population that
no one, when they play the reoccurring role of part time detective,
ever finds what they hear their self say they are looking for --
for the simple, but unrealized reason that  –
what they are always actually looking for is  --  their self.
 

From the singular minority perspective,
every word a majority man speaks, not related to survival,
is part of his attempt to find his self;
while that may sound intriguing, it is less than maximally accurate;
all of men’s non essential, recreational chit chat
is their brain struggling to comprehend what it is doing in consciousness,
and since what occurs in consciousness is based on the
collateral sensation that there is a self in the brain that is having the consciousness,
it is easy for life to make men take the brain’s attempted self-looking
as them searching for themselves, (or as they like to say: “their true self,”
 [a term that never fails to elicit a giggle from giraffes and life’s brother in law]).
 
 

When not imperatively engaged in survival activity,
men will be found  --  some times doing, but all the time  --  story-telling,
to others when possible, but incessantly to themselves;
and no matter what the subject appears to be  --  the subject is always them.
 
 

Men unremittingly tell stories about themselves --
in bits & pieces  --  and in extended essays;
stories about them in the past --  stories about them, come the future;
stories about them that are flattering  --  and ones embarrassing;
the nature of the story is unimportant  --  all that matters is that
the story is about the story teller  --  that the story is about oneself;
(more precisely put):
what is taking place is the brain’s consciousness talking about that very neural sensation it makes men call their, self --  that it created in them to begin with,
(do any of you children recognize that award winning science project:
The Closed-Loop, Self-Referential, House-Of-Self-Serving-Mirrors,
[what public school students call: "Me"]).
 

Every time a man utters an opinion on any matter –
it is his brain trying to get a grip on the nature of consciousness,
and indirectly: a man’s neural illusion of his self struggling to find
and clearly see itself;
acting as though endless talking about what it says is its self (and inner life)
will eventually make it fully aware of what it is;
which is like a man who has no knowledge of mathematics believing that
if he keeps randomly repeating meaningless strings of numbers
he will someday understand algebra;
or a person who can speak no Japanese believing that if he spouts
oriental sounding gibberish long enough,
one day the language will suddenly become comprehensible to him;
or the fabled Lancelot thinking that if he tells sufficient tales of invented exploits,
he will someday magically emerge from the page and into actual existence.
 

Men do not speak interminably of themselves because they are vain,
and self centered,
and not in an attempt to, promote-themselves,
nor in an effort to heal a poor self image;
an ordinary, normal, sane person talks about their self, their ideas,
their dreams, their fears, their beliefs, their opinions, their past,
their future, their failures, their successes, what they like, what they don’t like,
what they approve of and what they disapprove of,
in the never-satisfying, never-ending struggle to reveal:
The-kind-of-person-they-are.
Every time a man makes a critical comment about anything,
he is not actually talking about the thing he refers to --  but about himself;
“Country music is just noise” --   “Republicans are crooks” --
“Basketball is not a real sport”  --  these are not examples of
a speaker commenting on the subjects noted,
but are the speaker saying that he is not the type of person
you should associate in your mind with that form of music, politics, or popular culture.
 

Men speak seriously only about physical matters of survival;
they are not able to speak so regarding affairs in their second reality –
they appear to do so --  but they do not and cannot,
for there is nothing that in truth can be seriously said about non serious matters;
it is an enforced game of collective pretend among men:
to appear to be talking quite seriously about some qualitative aspect of some second reality matter, (abstract art, movies, morality),
but everyone understands that you are actually talking about yourself –
well --  you are attempting to talk about yourself;
to identify who you are by the expressing of the tastes & preferences that the “you” you are looking for has;
but it is all a façade, for neither you nor anyone else has any serious interest,
or preference in matters that are by their own nature  –  non serious,
and from the unneeded minority perspective, the least serious of all
second reality matters is the matter of a man’s presumed self.
Oh, this Self is absolutely serious and necessary for a normal,
majority-centered life, (and we’re talking, life-in-your-head here),
but for those who need to see it   --   and who come to see it,
this neural self is but a convenient fiction,
and in continued fidelity to maximum verbal precision,
let it be noted that “fiction” is not the right word  --  but there is no right word;
no matter how honest, sincere and serious he was,
if asked, Odysseus could not by any imaginable stretch, accurately describe himself;
if the source of the word, “fiction” --  be itself fictitious,
what clarity of definition can you expect there from?
 

In simple terms,
(capable of terribly misleading the sophisticated & complicated),
men incessantly talk about themselves in the attempt to create a self;
                     “I” is a verb:  self --  an on going, work-in-progress.
 

In even more direct words:
men’s brains have men endlessly talking about what they call their conscious self
in the brain’s struggle to comprehend the nature of its own consciousness.
 

Blunter still:
your consciousness is life’s on going effort to figure out what it is up to;
you wanting to be enlightened is life  --  using your individual brain  --
asking itself: “What in the hell am I doing?!”
 
 

                                                                   J
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

.....remember: anything that anyone is urgently trying to sell to you  --   you don't need,
     and if they're passionately attempting to give it away  --  it's even more to be avoided  --
        .....(and this damn near applies to consciousness  --
 
 

              .....unless of course, your goal is to be a better behaved cow).
 
 
 
 
 

                                                                                       Cavére ides de goobers amour propre.