Author name: Bryan Hubbard

I bumped into my old friend, Diane, the other day.  I hadn’t seen her in ages, and she looked great – in fact, she had lost several stone in weight.

I asked her what diet she had followed.  None, she said, she’d been to see a hypnotherapist as a last resort after starting and failing almost every weight-loss programme and diet around.

Under hypnosis, Diane discovered that her fixation with foods – and it was always the ‘comfort’ foods of cakes, buns and biscuits – was associated with an upsetting incident that happened at her grandparents’ home when she was just five years old.

From the day we began at nursery or kindergarten, we were taught the subjective pronouns, such as ‘you’, ‘he’ and ‘she’.  They point to something ‘outside’ – you or the ubiquitous Jane, Janet or John, for instance, who always seem to be running or skipping.

The personal pronoun – I – also makes sense when it ‘points’ at something related to my own body, such as when we say: “My leg hurts” or even “I am hungry” or “I am tired”.

But it all gets a little more tricky when we make existential statements such as “I am miserable” or “I am sick and tired of being in this marriage”.  Are we saying that I – as in my body – is miserable?  Bodies might get ill, but they don’t get miserable, or even sick and tired of a marriage, so what exactly is this I pointing to?

Just as the Japanese prince wondered if he was a man who had vividly dreamed he was a butterfly or a butterfly still dreaming he was a man, are you a person having thoughts or are thoughts thinking you into being?

Most of us assume that there is a conscious controller in Command Central, a substantial ‘you’ that uses thoughts to solve problems and achieve things in life.

But supposing it’s the other way round.  Suppose the thought comes first, and pre-packed with that is the idea of ‘you’ that thinks it’s the thinker having the thought!