I just got through watching “The Tenant”, a movie by Roman Polanski from the 70’s. It was quite bizarre, but then I like the bizarre. In it, the main character, played by Polanski himself, says something that really got me thinking.
I’m paraphrasing here, but he says something like, “Say you chopped off your arm and survived. You would say ‘me and my arm.’ If you chopped off your leg, you would say, ‘me and my leg.’ But what would you say if you chopped off your head? Would you say, ‘me and my head,’ or would you say, ‘me and my body’?”
And mind you, he has this conversation before he goes completely ‘round the bend, so you can imagine what state he’s in by the time he goes totally bonkers.
Anyway, it made me realize that on some level, I’ve always thought of myself as residing in that place just behind my eyes. Am I alone in this? I don’t think they say “The eyes are the window to the soul” for nothing.
I kind of feel as though my body is the vehicle that “I” ride around in. That’s probably why I’m so irritated when some part of my body gets hurt. It’s darned inconvenient, and it almost seems unfair that “I” have to experience the pain. On the other hand, when my body experiences pleasure, yeah, I’m willing to own that, for sure.
But if my body isn’t me, than what is me? My thoughts? My eyesight?
Ugh, thinking this deeply makes my head hurt. My head. The head that belongs to me. The me that is…God knows where.
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