Each of Us Is Self-Validating
Ownership of our autonomy is essential.
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Each of us lives our life, and we are at the center of our world. Compared to ourselves, we cannot so intimately understand any other being in existence. Every other person is but a speck or a part; I am the only person who I have been given access to in full. I have witnessed the closing of my eyes at night, and I was there as they opened; I have been privy to my time in solitude, and have witnessed the transformations of both this body and mind across the years; only I have seen the sublime emotions that have ignited here and there in such beautiful and effervescent scenes across the ether of the soul; and only I have witnessed this constant flow of consciousness, thought, and personhood, which never ceases to proclaim and imagine.
Why should I ever put the evaluations of another above my own? How can I ever heed the words of muffled and near-silent voices from far off, when my own is so proud and resounding, even with its quietest whispers? Am I to follow the direction of others who have looked upon some scrap or corner of the map that guides me, when I have borne witness to the thing in full, and can see clearly the path my heart wants to follow?
It is understandable to defer to the astronomer on opinions concerning Mars, or to the engineer on the topic of engines and machinery, or the mathematician when it comes to geometry and calculus, but I am the world’s foremost authority on myself, and before I should take the instruction of anyone else, I should be certain that it is an extension of my own thought, that it is a tool at the end of my hand, or an ornament upon my own fixtures, for there is no hand more suitable to my task than my own, and no extension or prosthetic better suited to make me effective than my own flesh and blood.
I give to the world a single rarefied element, and it is both bane and blessing that I have none other to give but that no other can give what can be gotten from me alone. Whether diamond, or gold, or stone, or dung, each of us is of only one material, and though we might admire the role played by some other, there is no paucity of roles which we alone are able to satisfy. One’s parents advise them to become a doctor or lawyer, but it would be a backwards society without police or mechanics. It…
