What is me?

It’s a weird way to put it even as I type it in.

I know the usual and the grammatically correct way to say it is “who am I?”

But what if the question was “what is me?”

What is the difference between who and what?

I actually think the what question is much easier to answer in a way that’s already so prevalently answered.

“Who am I? I am a woman. I am a twenty something year old person. I am a writer. I am a painter. I am a daughter. I am a sister. I am yadayadayada.”

All these nouns, to me, are something that I identify with but not unique to me. For example, there were plenty of women before I came to this world. There were so many youngins and writers and painters and daughters and sisters yada’s that have come before my existence. I could have been everything else but these. I could have been a man. I could have been a seventy year old. I could have been an athlete. I could have been a chess player. I could have been a son. I could have been a brother. During my lifetime thus far, I have somehow fallen into the preexisting categories of the nouns I have chosen to use to answer the question “what is me?”

On the flip side, how do you answer to “who am I?”

Who?

What does “who” exactly mean?

Is it the adjectives such as curious and anxious and brave? Is it dualities like good and bad? Is it the ping pong table between consciousness and subconsciousness? If you take all the nouns that describe your relationship to other people, your job, your role in a community, your position in the society, your ability and talent for something, and so on, what is left to describe your who?

I just came up with this curious thought, so I unfortunately do not have an answer to my own question.

But it certainly is a very interesting question to explore, isn’t it?