One of the most extraordinary things about being a human being is that we just wake up in the world and find ourselves here, though what 'here' is is something we never discover. Existence is something that happens to us, and then remains a mystery. There is no question of our having any say in it: a light comes on in a new centre of consciousness, and it is another one of us.
We find ourselves not awarenesses only, but bodies also, and perhaps other things besides - whatever we are, it is certainty complex. And we inherit a going concern. We know nothing about any of it until after it is well under way, by which time we are already a particular person, born a while back to two other persons embedded in particular circumstances; and everything that has happened to us since then constitutes what is already a life; and already we arc partially-formed personalities. Everything about the situation is specific in the highest degree, a fate, a destiny, already in full swing when it is imposed on us, so that we ourselves are a fait accompli with which we are presented.
Later this will confront many of us with the question; "What is this "I" that I am?' But to begin with, at any rate, our consciousness is not a consciousness of self. The reality of the situation is not that our awareness starts by being an awareness of our own existence as unique persons, and then extends outwards from this as a starting point to become an awareness of the world around us. The process moves in the opposite direction: we start by being aware of things outside ourselves - light, space, movement, objects, colours, people - and al first these fill our consciousness; and it is only by degrees that we become aware of our selves as centres of these experiences, as entities distinct, and to that extent separate, from what is going on outside us. Quite a lot of people, either underdeveloped people or people in underdeveloped societies, never securely establish a sense of self. But whether we as individuals become self-aware or not - and whatever we do, and whatever happens to us - it is inescapably us that we are, and this is the life we have; and whether we die in infancy or live lo he a hundred, it is for all lime true that each of us has existed in the world as a distinct human being who lived that life.
What I want to do in this book is tell the story of one such life, the only one I know better than anyone else knows it. I shall do everything in my power to tell the truth, and nothing but the truth; but I shall not attempt to write the whole truth, for that would be boring; in fact the most important task of all will be the task of selection. Everything here will be as I carefully remember it, but not everything I remember will be here. Memory can err, of course, so I shall make use of all the checks on mine that are available, chiefly older relatives and surviving documents. If, in spite of this, mistakes occur, I apologise in advance. If the reader thinks of the book as being called As I Remember, that will give him the right perspective. It is a report of experience, not a record of events.
[From here the subjective account begins...]