When I say ‘I’, where does this word resonate in me? What is the sensation? This is an important question. ‘I’ is a very powerful word and it tells me a great deal about myself.
Do I avoid the word ‘I’ in my speech? Do I say tend to say ‘we’ or ‘you’? Why would I do this?
For example, I may say: ‘We don’t seem to take such and such issue seriously’ instead of ‘I don’t seem to take this issue seriously’. Am I really able to speak for a collective? Perhaps I should just own up to my own opinions rather than generalizing them?
Every time I say ‘I’, there is an opportunity to observe myself. When I use other pronouns, am I deflecting attention away from me because I do not wish to observe myself?
Then there are those masters of circumlocution who twist their sentences around to avoid the use of ‘I’. They try to make their statements impersonal or general in nature to avoid the appearance of ego or subjectivity. Perhaps this has a limited application in academic discourse but it also leads to abstractions that limit communication and may make false claims to universality. Can I stand for what I say? Can I bring who I am to what I say?
Consider the different ways I may start a sentence:
I think….
I believe…
I know…
I sense…
I feel…
I hear…
I want…
I wish…
I agree…
I don’t…
Each of these formulations brings something different to what I say because each verb is active and activates something in me; each has the possibility of beginning in a different place in me and ‘sounding’ differently. What makes each verb unique is the possibility that at the moment of saying ‘I’, I observe myself and that places ‘I’ inside of what I say.
Can I sense where my ‘I’ is when I speak? Can I observe the impact of that location on my state and my connection to the one I speak to? When my presence is present in the present, where is I?
