An ornate hand mirror leans against a burgundy velvet cushion beside a pale quill feather.

Original artwork, not a still

Alan Watts

Trying to define yourself is like trying to bite your own teeth.

Behind the line

What it means

Our interpretation.

Attempting to define yourself, the speaker suggests, is a self-defeating loop: the one doing the defining is also the thing to be defined, so the effort can't reach itself. Like teeth failing to bite themselves, the self slips from its own grasp, and the comparison is playful about it.

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