Honestly, I don’t know where to start. A friend introduced me to blogging today. Granted, I have been familiar with the term but it was not clear to me what the essence of an online journal will be. However, after a lengthy conversation my friend convinced me that every human being “needs” to blog. Sorry, I tend to be sarcastic, but not in the cynical sense. Which brings me back to my original question? Who am I?
Well, my reservation to answering this question is multi-faceted. Let me try to flesh that out a little bit. Perhaps, it is hard for me to tell you who I am because, I don’t know who you are. Often when we introduce ourselves to people we try to tell them things about ourselves that we think they may be able to relate to. For instance, someone has probably said this to you before, ” O yes, I have a friend, who has a sister who also goes to Princeton…like you”. Why do people do this? Maybe, we feel that people will not be interested in us if we can’t convince them that we share some commonality. One would cursorily think that as humans we share so many things in common that we shouldn’t have to bend over backwards to convince people of how similar to them we may be. However, history has shown us time and again that we as humans have been plagued by the awareness of how different we are from one another.
I digress. It is hard for me to tell you who i am because I guess I fear that you will discount me, even before hearing me out. I guess I don’t want you to stop reading this blog or to think you and I may have nothing in common simply because I may identify myself with a gender, a nation, a religion or some ideology. So my solution is to tell you very little about myself, at least for the time being. In a sense, you may get to know me even better by first getting acquainted with my thoughts.
By the way I have not forgotten I said earlier that the reason for my hesitation with the question, ‘who am I’ is multi-faceted. Among other reasons I think I hesistate because I don’t really know who I am. I am still trying to find out. Perhaps, as I broadcast my thoughts to the world and as I get back comments from you I shall in time discover who it is that I really am. I hope to be pleasantly surprised but I have a feeling that I may not be prepared for what I find out.
Thoughts reflect a person better than anything else. Imagine a world in which we could only hear one another’s thoughts, without seeing our faces, skin colors, heights, or any other physical characteristics. Perhaps we would understand one another more.
The anonymity of the internet, at its best, probably allows us to leave lots of mental gabbage behind and focus on who we really are, or in your case, figuring out who you are. Of course this same faceless interface can also nurtures cowardly falsehood. Its freedom is scary, isn’t it?
Comment by anon — November 8, 2005 @ 10:01 pm
Thanks for your feedback Anon. Very insightful. I see eye to eye with you in regards to your comment, ” this same faceless interphase can also nurture cowardly falsehood”. That is certainly something to guard against. We both know that it is bad to be cowardly and/or to be false. Two questions remain: 1. How good are we at identifying cowardice or falsehood and 2. can these vices ever be justified.
Comment by suruja — November 9, 2005 @ 1:36 am