I of the Beholder

Friday, May 23, 2025

I of the Beholder

One of the challenging things—at least for some of us—lies in writing an idiosyncratic blog about oneself—one’s reactions to things online and in the real world—but without resorting to the first-person pronoun in the subjective case. Saying I, I, I over and over again gets old. On second and third read-through, it comes to sound weirdly self-obsessed.

What alternatives are there? One might choose the impersonal “one”. Or you might use the second-person variation on the impersonal “one” as a dummy stand-in for “I”: You might say “you” for “I” or “me.”

Or perhaps we could use the royal “we” or “us” for “I” or “me”. Or phrases might be inverted, no matter how awkwardly, to be rendered in the passive voice, sometimes with “by me”, sometimes without. Yes, all these options to the first person singular are to be had.

As for me, I prefer to be positive: it’s like spreading good times and fun. It’s like party time.

But one doesn’t like being negative as much. We don’t enjoy being the bearer of bad news. No one likes being the rain on the parade—except the Negative Nellies. They shouldn’t be called out. Not unless you like being confrontational.

It seems that someone is in a mood! A negative one. A negative mood is being had by someone.

Language: Whatever would we do without it?

“Carving of the Three Wise Monkeys in Nikko Toshogu, Japan” Wikipedia, Creative Commons Attribution