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Some years ago, I heard a principal tell his assembled students the most important words in the English language. The five most important words, he said, are “I’m proud of you.” The four most important words, “What is your opinion?’ The three, “If you please.” The two, “Thank you,” and the least important word, he said, is “I.”

        For his purposes, at the time, I accepted his suggestions; a significant, on-going part of education is developing a social consciousness, a concern, a courtesy, a civility at least, which enables young people to be aware of one another. However, I was bothered by his suggestion about the least important word.

            According to Erik Erikson, man grows from the first year of life through middle-age toward one or another direction in establishing a particular, basic psychological aspect in his relationships with others. He tends toward “trust or mistrust, autonomy or doubt, initiative or guilt, industry or inferiority, identity or role –confusion, intimacy or isolation, generativity or self-absorption, integrity or despair.And I would guess one’s concept of himself determines how far in either direction he develops along the way. In this sense, perhaps, “I” is the most important word in the language.

            Many people harbor a certain ambivalence where “I” is concerned. I don’t really know (or perhaps I shouldn’t know what I think until others tell me what to think. I am not to say I have done a good job or I liked that play or movie; that is for others to tell me. It was such little faith in “I” and such dependence upon the acceptance of others that finally led Mark Twain to chide, “Self-approval has its source in but one place and not elsewhere – in the approval of other people,” a natural extension, I think, of the philosophy  that “I” is the least important word in the language.

            By 1959, Nobel Prize physicist P.W. Bridgeman was convinced that even in science it is only “the first person singular” that man can faithfully express what he can express. “Insistence on the use of the first person will inevitably focus attention on the individual.” If I am talking with another who uses the word “I” as he talks with me, I know where he stands, and I know that he is speaking for himself. In recent years, more and more scientists have conceded that though they use deductive and inductive reasoning to conceive their truths, they must also depend upon creative imaginations and personal dispositions -  their “I.” Yes, it may be necessary  to state the obvious: it is not possible to transcend the human reference point.

            There is nothing there until “I” put it there, whether it be what I see on the football field, what I hear in a personal argument, what I find on the printed page or in the scientific laboratory. No matter what I pursue, the “I” is my primary means of perception. I search among the available date for my best interpretation of the world around me.

            H.L. Mencken believed that “No man ever quite believes in any other man.” Not an unrealistic bit of skepticism if, on the whole, no man ever quite believes in himself. If “I” is considered an unimportant word, it can lead to mistrust, doubt, guilt. Considered important, it can lead to trust, identity and integrity. Not a bad list of qualities to help us through this world.

           Bill Reynolds