arbitrary

One thing that I've really had to come to grips with over the past few years is that I am not what I think. If anything, on a practical relational level I'm more what I do, but even that's not quite right.

Until the day you realize that you aren't what you think, you kind of are. Because there's no space, no separation between you and the thoughts. You don't even really know the thoughts are directing your every mood and act, you just go along with them. If they say you're x, you're x. If they say you're y, you're y.

It's all arbitrary really. Our thoughts are gathered from outside of us and are primarily composed of words that we've absorbed and assigned meaning to, or rather that others in our lives have assigned meaning to. Just like the words themselves, the meaning is extracted from our experiences. Two people can have the same thought and interpret and be affected by it in different ways. For example the thought, "I'm not nice". That thought might cross one person's mind and produce feelings of shame while in another it might produce feelings of pride. Flimsy, isn't it?

It all depends on how we've been conditioned by the people around us, the events of our lives and the information we've absorbed. None of it has anything to do with who we are in a fundamental way. It's more like programmed information.

So if not our thoughts, what are we? If we're not what we think we are? If the thought "I am x" is just a thought? I mean even the thought "that's just a thought" is a thought. So what are we? Who can we claim to be if not our thoughts, when any word we use is nothing more than a thought with assigned meaning? Not that thought, not that thought either? Who are we? Who am I? Who are you?