I believe this to mean the people around us contribute our being for we become who we are as our peers, parents, co-workers, professors, etc. form our thinking, behavior, attitudes, and beliefs. The I-Thou relationship is present is this instance.
My mother has carried such as a huge impression on my identity, or being. Clothes was one of many areas she controlled-to a certain age, of course. Her choosing my clothes dictated what I was to wear to school that day. After turning thirteen (an estimate), I started choosing my own clothes for I was old enough to select what clothes were appropriate for me. My mother serves as a "You" for she is a subject with whom to understand, filled with emotions, opinions, and ideas. She is not an "it" that is to be experienced, but a person to encounter. My upbringing shaped my worldly perspective as she taught me valuable lessons in teaching me how this world works. The skills she taught me (cooking, doing laundry, ironing, etc.) prepared me for my adulthood so I can, one day, live independently and begin my own life the way I choose. This relationship matches this quote: “Every developing human child rests, like all developing beings, in the womb of the treat mother–the undifferentiated, not yet formed primal world. From this it detaches itself to enter a personal life, and it is only in dark hours when we slip out of this again (as happens even to the healthy, night after night) that we are close to her again. (76-77). Though I'm old enough to live on my own (if I was employed with sufficient income to buy an apartment), my living arrangements are limited to my parents household, coupled with my reliance on them for basic necessities.
My parents both offer me wise counsel as they relate their own experiences in helping me make wise choices to avoid my enacting the same mistakes they committed. They encourage me to be aware of my surroundings, be versatile in knowledge (stay up-to-date with current events), conduct myself with confidence and self-respect, among others. They try to equip me with life skills for they are aware fully of what the world offers and what it can do to me. My family ties exemplifies the "I-You" relationship because it is unmediated: nothing intervenes between my parents and me.
Contrast to an I-Thou relationship is the a "I-It"-a relationship where one treats the other as an object, rather than a subject.
Sandy Bottom Nature Park is a site where I tread through without, consciously, engaging with it. Though I'm there physically, I not there spiritually for listening to music distracts me from connecting to my environment. As I'm absorbed in my thoughts, I attend more to my music and my thoughts than what the nature park offers. This echoes what Belden Lane says about being there, but not being there. "Being bodily there present is never identical with the fullness of being to which humans can be open in time and space"(29).
As I immerse myself in my pop music, my thoughts run rampant, filled with memories of my interactions with others. This self-awareness about my conversations with people ties into the phrase, "cogito, ergo sum"(I think, therefore, I am.)" My ability to think confirms my existence.
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