How did you learn how to use the word "I"?

Is there something to get right in describing yourself?

Human language emerged to help us navigate and manipulate our environments. Language is a great tool for this purpose and gets us into trouble when we try to use it for other purposes, such as describing each other and ourselves. “Grass is green” and “I am sad” are two sentences that have very similar structures, but we shouldn’t let that similar structure confuse us into thinking that “grass” and “I” can be captured in language the same way. 

Consider how we learn to name things in the world - curious children constantly point and ask “what is that?”, and we tell them things like “that is a dog”, “that is a tree”, etc. They might then ask follow-up questions - they might point to a cat and say “is that a dog?”, or to a piece of broccoli and ask “is that a tree?” and gradually refine their use of “dog” and “tree” to use the words in the way that competent language-users agree they are meant to be used.

Now, how did you learn to refer to yourself? How did you learn to refer to your feelings? Can you point to yourself? Can you point to your sadness? Can you ask those clarifying questions about yourself and your feelings? Can you sit there with a feelings-teacher and ask “is this feeling sadness? ….what about this one? ..or this one?” while calling their attention to something that only you are aware of?

We aren’t taught about ourselves and our feelings the way we are taught about everything else - when we cry as children our parents comfort us by saying “oh no, you’re sad!” and we learn to replace our crying by saying “I’m sad”. We aren’t taught how to correlate words with private inner experiences. But then, later in life, we come to think of ourselves as having private inner experiences because we get caught up in the grammar of description, thinking that “I am sad” and “grass is green” both pick out properties of fixed objects. 

We don’t exist as fixed objects, not in the way that language leads us to think we do. The work we do to describe ourselves, to “get in touch” with our feelings and motivations, is in and of itself a generative and transformational experience. As much as language is an extension of our deeper ways of existing, it grants us access to something new - we don’t just get to exist but get to create ourselves in language. The answer to “what am I?” is both “something that asks that question” and “whatever we say that we are”.