Nothing

What is "self?"

You hear so much about this word "self," yet no one really bothers to define it. There are lots of extensions and variations. You can be a "self-made millionaire" or a bum because you have no "self-respect." You can do something out of "self-interest," or because you're "selfish;" or you could go the other way and be totally "selfless." Young girls are "self-conscious" and some subject themselves to "self-harm" or "self-abuse." We point out "selves" that belong to us - "ourselves, myself" - and those that don't - "yourselves" or "themselves" (that one always strikes me as funny, like, "Hey, look at them selves over yonder"). Some things are "self-sustaining," while other are "self-destructing."

And all of these concepts and words stem from this one ambiguous idea of "self" and create all these other ambiguous ideas that no one seems to define but everybody seems to understand? But how? They don't make sense, and they certainly don't make the others any clearer.

Humans say "self-made" in a way that really can't be used the way "self-sustaining" is - it is possible independently maintain a certain level of functionality, but nowhere in the history of anything has something literally self-made its own being out of nothing. Self-respect is good, and so is self-interest, but too much of either and you could lean toward selfish, which is bad. But adding "ish" to "self" doesn't have the same effect as it does on "fat" or "green": "That man is fat-ish (meaning "leaning toward fat but not really there yet), that book is greenish" ("almost green but not quite, more like a green-yellow mix).

How can one really be "almost self"?

But "selfish" is still bad, like "self-conscious," when all that really means is "aware of one's self." Yet it is linked to self-abuse and self-harm, which I think sounds about as scary as "selfless," which should mean "a total loss of self." But it's even more scary if you view the "self" in "selfless" physically like you would "self abuse" - it literally means "you have misplaced your physical body."

That's another layer to the mess: is "self" physical or theoretical? Take "self-interest," for example. Let's say John was offered a piece of cake but was severely allergic to cake, but he loved cake more than anything else in the world. If John were to "act in his own self-interest," the results would be drastically different if his interest was in his physical self or his metaphysical self. If he acted in metaphysical interest and ate the cake, he would have on brief moment of mental euphoria before his physical interest choked on the cake and died. But if he acted in physical interest, he would crush his metaphysical hopes of cake but at least live long enough to get a cheese ball instead. When he resisted the urge and said he was "proud of himself," that could then mean that he was proud of the stamina possessed by his overall being or that he was pleased with his physical appearance, which really has nothing to do with the overall anecdote and succeeds in losing the reader.

Further proof that my mind need not be "on" after midnight.