Cogito, Ergo Sum

Rene Descartes's discourse lays the ground work for modern day philosophy. Given the sudden interest in the newly found "Quarter life crisis" mails that have started circulating around, I come across people all suddenly relating to it. Trying to find who they really are?

For a long time now I seem to have given up on discovering myself - introspection as is tough in itself, retrospection even more so. It feels like the conversations you had with friends just before the IIM interviews. Trying to desperately fill out those blank pages with 'about you' stuff, your strengths, weaknesses, skills etc etc etc. And I thought that SWAT analysis was something they taught you in a B-school. Yeah, Right !

So well, trying to answer the ultimate bore of a question - Who am I this time?

Am I the intellectual being; a fountainhead of obscure knowledge? Or am I the nitwit; dumb and inarticulate on issues that matter most. Am I the snob, with a swollen nose or am I the docile, cushioned with humility? Am I the obsessive, the compulsive, the disorderly? Or am I the logical, the reasoned, the guide? Am I the pillar of strength in times hard, or am I the emotional wreck? Am I the loud mouthed insensitive or the understanding sympathetic? Am I the mathematician or the poet? Am I a shadow of my previous ghosts or am I the light at the end of the tunnel?

I know not. Probably all rolled into one. A faucet with a million levers. I am who I am.

But well, as Descartes points out - "I think, therefore I am" - these days for me pretty much translates to "I think, therefore IIM" !!