Reflection 684

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It helps to have problems

It helps to have problems. If I'm having trouble relating to people, I have a powerful motive for seeing Who is having this trouble. For I find that all my problems — including that of spontaneity — boil down to the problem of my identity. Who am I? It is extremely easy to look and see for myself what the answer is: namely, that I am, as 1st Person, just Capacity.* It is less easy to go on looking till the social confidence trick — which makes me out to be 3rd-person only — ceases to take me in. But neither is it as hard as it is often advertised to be.

*For instance, I have only to point here (to the place where I imagined that I experienced a neck) to see that my finger is pointing into empty space. Or I have only to look down at my trunk to see that it stops well short of my neck, and carries, Atlas-like, the world.

From How To Be Spontaneous, an article published in As I See It, a collection of articles by Douglas Harding.