We looked for the moment where the self begins, starts becoming. Many students placed that at a rather late point, somewhere after early childhood because they felt the early child didn't have the consciousness to work at the becoming self. Others argued that the development of that same consciousness is just as much a part of the becoming self as any other, maybe even more. They set the beginning of self much earlier. Of those, most finally settled at birth as the beginning of the self.
Many of the women who had lived through pregnancy and birth told stories about how the later fetus behaves. They said that they felt the self began becoming even then. The ones who had lived through the process more than once told stories about how one child carried way more differently than another. Even when the developing fetus comes from the same father, the patterns of development and behavior were radically different. Others spoke about how the way the development felt, how much movement, how much kicking and the like, predicted how the child would behave when born. Others told stories about how the child behaved completely differently than the behavior during the carry. Still others told a very different story. They centered on the responsibility of the mother and the people around her. They believed that all kinds of things influenced healthy development of the fetus in the child. They thought they needed to eat well, drink lots of water, listen to music that made for calm, keep inner and outer anger out of their feelings, avoid arguments, sleep well, as well as stay away from smoking (second-hand as well), drinking, and any other recreational substances. They believed that the external environment as well as the internal environment of the developing child had a powerful influence on the physical and emotional growth and well being of the fetus and the child to be born.
Writing about these ideas now, I see how admirable they are. It defines a very healthy way to live in many if not all aspects. Some of these mothers also spoke about their own spiritual health as well during pregnancy. Indeed, it strikes me that we all might conduct ourselves as if we are carrying a child, and the internal and external environment in which we choose to engage will have an influence on that being and our own.
Maybe that seeming metaphor holds more truth than I imagined. Without entering into a mind/body duality, we may well be carrying a developing whole being within our being. How beautiful that could feel. When we take care of our physical selves in terms of what we eat and ingest altogether, we foster a healthy inner environment. When we critically reflect on our meaning perspectives, we nurture our intellectual and emotional self. As we consider the nature of our being, we offer our spiritual self a chance to strengthen and grow. Even as the mother of a child ages as the fetus grows, so do we all age as the being within continues to grow and mature all of our lives. That our own becoming of a whole being can continue to become if we feed it, nurture it, and honor it as we age in our lives. As we grow older, which most of us see and feel as a diminishment of our physical selves, we can act in such a way that the being within, of the self within the being, continues to grow and mature but does not age in the sense that age equals illness and diminishment. That would seem like a remarkable if not miraculous idea and eventuality. We grow old and move toward our mortality while we grow as a youthful entity becoming more and more our self as if that life of maturation and explication will continue to open eternally.
Where ever and whenever the self begins, it may serve as the start of a never ending becoming.
Finally, we settled on birth as the only beginning of self that we could make full sense out of for the purposes of our class.