I was looking last night through a folder of poems I have written. I came across this bit of doggerel from 44 years ago. I know its age because I had written it on an engineering calculation pad from Amoco Production Company where I worked as a petroleum engineer in my first job right out of engineering graduate school. After only a few months I had begun to realize that I was in the wrong field, that despite my formal training, I had little interest in engineering. This poem, although embarrassingly self-absorbed, reflects my thinking.
Because I know one day I’ll die,
I search about to try to find
The who and what and why am I.
But since I see no answers clear,
I feel so small and bare and blind.
And yet I know that I am I.
So for the who and what and why,
I turn to look inside my mind,
For only there the answers lie.
I suspect there is no “self” in the sense that if it is a mutable entity, and it is, then it is like trying to grasp a wet bar of soap. The tighter you squeeze the farther away it squirts from your grasp.
Maybe the last line should read
For only there the questions lie.
Or the 6th line… “And yet I know not what am I” Or maybe not. If someone asked me who I am, that answer might change from day to day if not moment to moment.