Ego cogito, ergo sum, I think, therefore I am. Maybe this is the case, maybe not. Let’s explore it all a bit. Let’s have some fun with it: "I feel, therefore I am," (Accipio ergo sum) "I wonder, therefore I am," (Admiror ergo sum.) "I dance, therefore I am," (Chorea ergo sum.) "I play, therefore I am," (Adludo ergo sum.) "I move, therefore I am," (Agilis ergo sum.) “I sing” (Ego cano, ergo sum), "I create, therefore I am," (Aedifico ergo sum.) or "I love, therefore I am," (Amo ergo sum.) Or even just, sum (am)? Is “am” (being) all that there is?
All this intrigues me. What is it that we are? Are we what we do, or are we just being? I am a thinker, a feeler, a wonderer, a player, mover, creator, lover, and so much else. I am not just being a being. I am relating, interacting, communicating. The nature of being Das Dasein (being, existence) is so much more than a mere noun; it is process, it is verb. Are we ever just nouns? Can we simply be nouns? Surely, only to an observer – never to the one who lives, engages, interacts.
Rene Descartes, French philosopher and mathematician (1596-1650) , the author of the words Ego cogito, ergo sum did his thinking confined in a disused baker’s oven. Why? Because his body was wracked with pain and he felt he needed to contain it all in a tight, confined space.
This is a very interesting bit of information, because one is reminded of what the animal behaviour expert, Temple Grandin (born 1947) did to feel safe in her autistic body. She designed a bed that held her, contained her, settled her before she was able to meet the world. Temple Grandin went on to design restrictive containers for animals before slaughter, to settle their anxiety. The containment thing also gave rise to the use of weighted blankets, slings, and other similar holding devices for people with autism, ADHD, insomnia, osteoarthritis, and chronic pain through deep pressure stimulation which calms the nervous system. Seems Descartes knew this well 400 years ago.
Descartes identified with that which he used to discern himself, not with his own body. He ignored the body, focusing just on the mind. Grandin brought awareness back to the body, observing some fundamental needs of the body, noticing that in calming the body, the mind was calmed as well. There is an essential difference in this shift: a realization that we are more than body and more than mind. Confinement does not give rise to an idea of separation of body and mind nor does it define a person. Cats like boxes, but the box is not the cat. The “am” of a person is so much more than this thing that holds them still and so much more than the mind that feels free to express itself while in confinement. The noun of “am” is incomplete unless it is part of an interactive process.
Descartes containment tightened his experience of being an “am” to a thought, but if he was a dancer he would know himself in fluid movement. Dancers and musicians come alive not in thought, but exploration of the shape of sound and movement. Painters know it in colour, texture and canvas. Lovers know it in connection with others, in intimacy, touch and voice.
We are not one thing; we are alive. We engage, we create, we play, we dance, we sing. Our experiences of the world identify the world for us. The world is not known outside our experiences. As Schopenhauer put it, though we live in the “same environment, everyone lives in a different world. The world in which everyone lives depends first on their perception of it, therefore, it follows the diversity of minds." And more, a diversity of bodily presences.
There is no singular am-ness, but everything in relation, everything in connection, everything in communication, indeed in communion.
