In one recent day I was on phone calls, IM exchanges and face to face conversations with individuals in Helsinki, Moscow, Hong Kong, Frankfurt, Seattle, Istanbul and Portland. In a very real sense I was in each of those places within a time span of no more than an hour - I was truly in more than one place at the same time. This is only possible - me being in more than one place at the same time - if I don't think of myself as defined by my physical being or constrained by traditional understanding of time and space.
When I left the physical conversations I was having did "I" leave? I don't think so. Part of me remained with the other person as a conversational memory - perhaps even as an emotion experienced by the other party. Who am "I" then? For most of us our sense of self is, in large part, informed by and limited to what our physical senses tell us about who we are - I am my body, my feelings and my thoughts. These artifacts of self go with "me" wherever "I" go and where "I" am is where they are. But what if I thought of myself as moving through the world in another way. What if "I" occupied time and space in a different way? What would be my approach to inteacting with others if I thought of myself moving through the world as a conversation.
As a conversation I become the stories others have about me. I become the internal conversations they have about the meaning of my behaviors, my actions, my mood, my words and my spirit. I become the the internal conversation they feel about me. These conversations contain me and they are the raw building blocks used to co-create our futures together. How congruent are these "conversations that I am" with the ideals I hold as valuable? In the beginning there was the "word" and from the word conversations began that created what we have and who we are today.
