Buber and "I and Thou" - Katie Lamp

When I first read selections of Martin Buber's "I and Thou" two years ago at Oxford, I hated it. Honestly, it was confusing and if I had to see the words "I", "you" and "it" in succession like that ever again I thought I would go crazy. As you can imagine, I was not too thrilled when it was handed out in class. However, I decided to give it a chance, and the selections pulled from the text that we discussed were surprisingly interesting to me. I was able to look past my first impressions and see how the relationships between people and things form and how our language has allowed us to construct and use these relationships. There is so much depth in the understanding it takes to fully appreciate the relationship between an "I" and a "you" and how this relationship is established and maintained, and after examing Buber's writing from a different perspective, I can appreciate what he is talking about a lot more.