ManAt a range of several feet you are a human being - one amongst about eight billion others on this planet. In your mother's womb you evolved from a fertilised egg, through fish-like and reptilian forms (recapitulating the evolutionary journey of Life) to a human foetus, to be then born as a human baby. Gradually you learned the arts and crafts of being human, learning to smile, to crawl, to walk and talk. As you grew physically, through puberty into adulthood, so you grew in consciousness, learning to see yourself from outside through the eyes of others, learning to construct your self-image. In time you came to more fully identify with your appearance and, with this, your name, gender, age, family, nationality, colour, job, income� In this way you became an adult member of human society.If you have a long life you will gradually grow old. Adult working life will be followed by the active retirement of second youth, with its partial surrender of responsibilities and powers; then by second childhood and second infancy; and finally the grave. In a hundred years you will almost certainly be dead. Looking out you see part of your own body, emerging from the headless void at the centre. Beyond your own body you see others. It is by placing yourself at their range that you obtain a view of yourself as a person in the world. You put yourself in their shoes, or look in a mirror or at photographs - all these help reveal who you are at the human level. The view of you from outside is of a single person.
Your own view out is of part of your own body and then others. Having
no face of your own you are capacity for your neighbour - you are your
neighbour. Your neighbour in turn is capacity for you, reflecting back
to you your humanity. |