"I am...I am...I am..."

The Grind Cafe, Lincoln Square, Chicago

It’s a funny thing to be, if you think about it. Hardly even a verb, just a fact:

I am.

The sentence alone seems unfinished, unnecessary. We all “are,” there’s no need to declare it.

But, isn’t “being” terribly significant? To have a body? To have consciousness? To have associations to people and places and things?

To have. If you've ever cleaned out the estate of a deceased loved one, you are intimately familiar with the humanness of possessing. Not just in the collection of knick knacks and material items one person amasses in a lifetime, but in the intangible collections as well - that mysterious, tender territory that is often, unfortunately, exposed much less clearly in the absence of the person who built it. In life, we stand as guard and guardian of these invisible treasuries. We are aware that they belong to us, but their presence can both assure and negate our own sense of belonging. I have thoughts, therefore I am. But, am I the only one with these thoughts? Am I the only one with these tastes? Does anyone else have this experience? Can anyone relate?

Perhaps being, in its broadest form, is simply an equation of having.

The verbs certainly appear copilots in romance languages. At least, as far as situations of need are involved.

In Italian, for example, you abandon the typical "being" conjugation (essere) for "having" (avere) when announcing hunger or thirst. Spanish follows the same pattern; "I'm hungry" (tengo hambre) and "I'm thirsty" (tengo sed) both translate more directly as "I have hunger" and "I have thirst." In French, the story is the same. In fact, you can even have sleepiness, too (j'ai sommeil).

Semantically, I suppose it makes sense that verbs of being and having interchange so regularly with cases of need. Perhaps it offers some reflection on what we've come to know about the human condition thus far:

To be means to have means to need.

Don’t worry. I’m not about to go into a manifesto on ontology and the theories of human consciousness here. This is all just inspired philosophy brought on by a good, strong cappuccino.

I’ll leave you with this. Wasn’t it Jeff Mangum who sang, “How strange it is to be anything at all?”

It is strange, isn’t it? If you think about it.