The I as a Dead Fish in the Sea.

We are people so we are individuals. I wonder if it is safe to say that. And in the word individual, there seems to be a certain heraldry, something so purposive in proclaiming not only who you are, but that you exist to state who you are, and to do so through a relation of difference between others. This is a good thing, it seems.

But a person is expected not to do this. Yes, a person may feel great cause to define their individual political stance in opposition to an oppressive one, but that is a political field and not an interpersonal one. The strength of being an individual for self is taken apart because of an expectation to divide yourself for others. In entering relationships with others you are expected to provide out of yourself a certain divisiveness, to slice a few parts of your individual person away so that what you are now defined to be, as it is, is through those very relations with others. You, an individual person, are defined through however many ways you divide yourself for the pieces of others to fit in your stead. You are defined by the things you are not.

So if this is some false kind of individuality, a shadowing form of strength of 'person', where is the real person's strength and truth? It seems that, if this definition through division is what is preferred, then one is disallowed from searching out where and who that is, kept away from coming alive.