fires, college applications...hell...maybe this incomprehensible article can take everyone's mind off of things.

How am I not myself?

Read my lips: to thine own self be untrue. You can’t read my lips because you are merely reading a text that is independent of me. Also, there is no me. No one wrote what you are reading. If you’ve believed everything that I’ve written so far, then you are swimming in the correct lane. SPLASH! You will now need a lot of faith in absurdities to believe what is contained in the next sentence. There is not just one you; there are also many yous.

Take a trip…to your mind’s eye. Here you can imagine anything; keep that in mind. Imagine each of the classes you take here at Roslyn High School and line up each of the classrooms of these classes in a row (something like booths at a fair). Walk into each of the classrooms and look at each of your selves. Your appearance may not be different in each class, but your eyes usually deceive you. Listen (trust your ears while you still have them) to the quantity and quality of what you are saying. Listen to the quantity and quality of what your teachers and classmates are saying. How do your words, or lack of words, relate to what your teachers and classmates are saying in each class? The way you relate to each classroom situation creates a different self. You form these classroom selves over the year. On a numerical level, each class gives you a different grade representing a different self. On a social level, you’ve created a different talking head for each different class. You may try to make jokes in some classes, make intelligent comments in others, and do absolutely nothing in math.

But, hey, there probably aren’t many selves; there probably is just one self that does many things. You do have one body, and your appearance can be differentiated from other people’s appearances. What was I saying? Of course there is one self because you see only one reflection of yourself in the mirror.

The mirror creates two physical appearances: one real you and one reflected you. The verbally constructed self (in my case the “you,” in your case the “I”) does not have a permanent home as the body does. You are never able to differentiate the real verbal self from the reflected verbal self. Whenever you try to find your real “self,” you will always be looking through a facebook of reflected selves. Your thoughts, written words, spoken words, relations to other people, appearance to other people, movements, gestures and memories are merely representations of a concrete self that doesn’t exist. Your memory attempts to forge a concrete self, but it only can preserve certain memories. Those preserved memories cannot truly be a concrete self because they represent merely a fragment of you. The problem with a concrete self is that you can’t keep track of all of your thoughts, words, and experiences. Instead of saying that you are leaving parts of your “self” everywhere, you are leaving selves everywhere.

Theoretically, there could be a continuous self. Since all selves are constructed, the construction of a unified self is as a valid as the construction of selves.

Do you really think that you are doing the constructing? If there is an I something constructed it. The I didn’t construct itself. The self you proudly own is not yours. It was externally imposed on you. Language and society have given you this self and these selves. The reason that you have different selves in different classes is that your self is determined by your environment. Without society you can’t exist.

“To thine own self be true.” That is impossible. The self isn’t yours.