It vs. thou – it’s a tricky
distinction one must make when entering into the world around us. When will we
choose to give an ‘other’ the benefit of contribution and the chance to
communicate with us? What constitutes their entitlement? Perhaps it is the fact
that they live or that they were
created for any purpose at all… if that were the case, it only seems respectful
that we would give it the chance to
communicate with us and become a ‘you.’
Sometimes, it seems like the only circumstance
that we would allow an ‘other’ to respond is when there is no risk that the
‘other’ will be harmed in the foreseeable future. For example, when I was a
little girl, I was given a stuffed animal bear… obviously, I figured the name
‘Beary’ suited her well, so Beary was her name. Notice I refer to Beary as
“her” rather than “it.” She sat safely on my bed for the majority of the day
and there was no risk of her being taken, destroyed, or disappearing, so I
figured that it was safe for me to allow this It to transform into a You.
If, however, my parents brought home a stuffed animal and told me that they
were giving it to my friend as a gift, I would not have allowed any sort of
significance to manifest in that bear.
As a young girl, I projected
feelings and emotions onto my stuffed animal and pretended that it was real. By
pretending that my stuffed bear was real, I actually began to see myself as an I, which ended up opening my eyes to
heightened sense of self-worth. I only really did this when I was alone or when
there were few other people around me. It simply wasn’t necessary for me to
revert to this tye of I-You
relationship between me and my bear when I was surrounded by lots of family and
friends… it only happened when I felt alone or needed to feel protected, like
when I was playing in a room by myself or when I was on the brink of falling
asleep alone in my room at night. Perhaps it was a mechanism I used to cope
with feeling alone. Buber explains, “I-You establishes the world of relation”
(56), so it would make sense that in my relation-less moments, my stuffed bear
suddenly came to life and communicated with me.
Rather than simply experiencing my
bear, I encountered her. In my youthful mentality, I felt that she protected me
in my times of loneliness. This explains why some nights, I had great
difficulty falling asleep without Beary by my side. According to my 6-year-old
reasoning, I knew that this stuffed animal bear must have been created for a
purpose, and it made sense in my young mind that her only purpose was to
protect me. Why would she been given to me in the first place – to simply sit
there and gather dust in the corner, left unseen and untouched? No, obviously
she was made for a legitimate reason, and that reason must have been important
enough for (1) a designer to imagine her, (2) a manufacturer to create her, (3)
a store to find her interesting enough to stock her on its shelves, and (4) my
parents to go out and spend their money on her. I reasoned that her creation
must not have been in vain. Thus, the bear’s significance became extremely
evident to me, and the It quickly became
a You.
I believe that this model manifests
itself in many other scenarios when one might feel alone – whether it is
beneath the trees, on a mountaintop overlooking the vast expanse of valley, or lying
on the ground under a black blanket of sky, speckled with stars. In our
loneliness, we allow an “other” to speak, and subsequently, we don’t feel so
alone anymore. This is when we allow the It
to become a You. Although we may
sometimes allow an It to become a You in these times of solidarity, the
transition often occurs simply out of our own current need… the new You maintains the qualities of an It, by serving my desire to be known. Though it may look like a subject, the You actually remains an object. It’s ‘You-ness’ only exists to serve my
desires to be known and feel loved, which actually causes it to remain as an
object. It’s an interesting dilemma...
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