==JAPAN: KM== [Contemplation]

Now I'm standing opposite to me. When I wave my hand, another "I" also does. When I smile, another "I" smiles back at me. To be exact, I'm standing in front of a mirror. Dear me? The hairs of my nostrils are getting longer. Since when? Some of my friends must have noticed that. Although I don't know the facts concerning me, other people do. I feel a little strange.
Who am I? What is MYSELF?
We often use the word "my body," but we know few things about each of our own bodies. For example, we have never looked at our own back and own back passage directly. Do you go unrecognized more important part? That's right. Throughout life you can't look at your face which other people remember and identify you from. Indeed you can gaze at your face with mirrors or pictures, but you can't set eyes on your full face right now as you are reading this essay. Imaginatively we form a few clues such as other glances into a vision of ourselves. As another example, we sometimes feel that there is something wrong with our body, but we can't know what is happening in it. In that case, we go to the hospital to consult a doctor. In short, another person enters us.
Who am I? What is MYSELF?
It may be to find a thing indigenous to me, in other words, to ask what I have that other people don't. A good face? My sense of fashion? A cheerful personality? The ability to run fast? To calculate accurately? None of them is a thing only one person has.
When a person asks you who you are, most people answer with their own name. Following the question, what if someone said to you, "Please prove it true." What would you answer? Probably most will be able to say nothing. Although my name is a kind of proper noun, it doesn't tell others about MYSELF.
As mentioned earlier, each of our faces is a thing which other people identify us from and we can't exchange with them. However, imagine a case where person's face is injured awfully by a chemical accident. Even if his face changes too badly for us to identify him from it, he is himself--himself doesn't change. My face symbolizes me objectively, but MYSELF doesn't rely on it.
Considering MYSELF like this, we find it hard to seek out it in our inside. We can't solve whether we are body or we have body and arbitrarily imagine that we are in the inside of our body. Maybe we are ought to turn our eyes to our outer.
Who am I? What is MYSELF?
There is the word "privacy." I know that this word is derived from "privative" which stand for loss or absence. Then a private life means the state of being deprived of something essential to our life. What is the essential thing deprived in the private life? Don't take it too seriously. It is another person. We need him or her in order to live a human life. He or she also needs us. It may be necessary that we think about who need us. As an example, a student was absent from school for a few days. If he doesn't become a topic of classroom conversation after his absence, he will be unhappy. This would mean that he has no meaningful space in other students. Getting a space in other people's lives may support own existence.
Here is another opinion. Once in a while we hear the phrase "none other than me" (Hokanaranu Watashi). Based on the concept of this phrase, I exist by means of distinguishing MYSELF from Not-MYSELF. The problem about "Who am I?" may stand back to back with "Who am I not?" in other words "Who are others?"
In either opinion, we can discover ourselves only by the method of looking through another person. In this sense, he or she and I may be complementary to each other.
Perhaps there are no people who think that the world is theirs. On holding experiences in common, we find out ourselves by means of looking through other people. Experience? Reading a book, listening to music, studying English and so on--these are what we can hold in common. How about the world of consideration or imagination? The facts in these kinds of the world are what we can't hold in common, at least it is difficult for us to hold in common. New logic comes into sight. Our existence depends on others to reflect ourselves on what we hold in common. However, there is what we don't hold in common. Then we don't have others who reflect us in the true sense. We reach the conclusion that we don't exist. Nobody exists? I still can't solve this riddle.
Who are you? What is YOURSELF?

"Getting It Together"
Have you read any books since you entered university? Do you read newspaper? There are many materials for writing an essay in them. As far as I'm concerned, it is difficult to choose a theme of essay. I went to the bookstore and turned the pages of several books. Then I came across the theme of this essay. Books or newspapers will show you some opinions. But you shouldn't be bound by them. It is to catch them as a start for writing and to express your own opinion freely that the most important things are.