Search

Once, a young man realised that he had lived his entire life without asking who he was. He knew his name, weight, how much money he had in his wallet and various bank accounts, IRA's and certificates of deposits, but none of these things were helpful in revealing the answer to this newfound question. He did not even know where to start looking for himself.1

He thought that perhaps religion had the answer to this niggling thing that had been in the back of his head recently. He had no idea where to start because on every corner there was a church, synagogue, mosque, temple, scientology deposit box, nihilistic box of nothing, existentialist bag of everything, or cultist's abandoned shack that had something different to say about what it is that people ought to be. He decided that knowing what you ought to be is well and good, but when you want to know who you are currently, that direction seemed to be a stumbling block.2

He typed “ who am I “ into Google, Ask Jeeves, AltaVista, Yahoo, Hotbot, and all the other search engines he could find. He was able to find penis enlargement techniques, breast enlargement techniques, home improvement techniques, mortgage rates, record dates, dating sites, satellites, bicycle chains, rabbits’ brains, but little evidence that the Internet and the citizens thereof knew anything of the young man or who he was.3

In his heart the question kept nagging. He felt that his search would never end. He founded and floundered. He swam and he ran. He pushed his body until it could take no more. He became afraid that his search would never end in despair fell upon him. He tried his wallet again. No clues had placed themselves there since last he looked. The search was fruitless. And in his confusion he wandered.4

Then one day he found himself walking down a strangely familiar road. He walked up to the house he remembered knowing more than the rest of the houses. The door was locked. He did not know why it was locked. It simply was. He accepted the fact of the door and waited for it to become an illegal alien or a ball of yarn or sometimes even a valuable pile of uranium for making a copy of a copy. It did not. He decided to remain agnostic on the subject of door transmogrification.5

He loved the street and thought of it as a giant mother embracing those who lived within it. He watched children play in the body of its August and they didn’t know who they were either. They did not seem bothered by the mystery. He decided that in reality we don’t know anything.6

Whole hours passed while he waited there for the door to do something. He began to hear one thing while he spoke another. Cognitive dissonance overcame him and he tried something random.
He placed his hand in his pocket and there found a key. The key fit the door so he unlocked it and stepped through. Past the door he found a hallway full of pictures. The pictures at one end of the hall showed the young man as an infant. The other end showed him in his current state. In between those points showed his progress between the two. If he started at one end he would grow older. At the other he thought he would disappear back into his mother’s womb. He decided to try this. The next time he was born he would be sure to start asking that question straight off so that maybe he could get it answered and perhaps get something done with his life.7

By walking backwards along his own timeline he discovered that his own development outside of the photographs did not change. His plan failed, but he found in his experiment that he was a white male; his hair was a gingery henna that disconcerted him somewhat. He had a name, dimension, weight, mass, hands and fingers, knees and toes, but none of these things told him anything except that he was human.8

In the end he decided that a man who searches for himself is a man who does not know what to look for. He got on with his life, not worrying about difficult philosophical concepts. His death bed found him smiling because he felt he had the answer. He told it to his family but they were not paying attention because he was dying. How could he be so selfish to think of himself while his imminent death was affecting them so deeply and personally? He smiled and apologized. They had a lot to worry about what with the rest of their lives to live and all. He pondered the solution for a bit and waited to be left alone for a little while. When that happy accident occurred the mostly empty room accepted his answer in silence as a whisper.9