At first, I wrote all this to become myself.
最初，我写下这一切，是为了成为我自己。
Writing isn’t a hobby for me. It’s not how I make a living. It’s not even a way to train my thinking. It’s more like a state of mind—one that makes me take life, and myself, seriously.
写作对我来说不是爱好，不是谋生，不是思维练习。它更像是一种状态，让我严肃地面对生活和自己。
I wrote down my feelings of inferiority, confusion, anger, and reflection. I wrote about my dislike for bald monks, and also my tenderness toward a cherry blossom. I wrote about how society tames people, how they fall apart, and how creativity can wither in spring. I wrote about the cracks in myself, not the polished version.
我写下自己的自卑、困惑、愤怒、沉思。我写下对秃驴的反感，也写我对一株樱花的怜惜。我写社会的驯化，写人的断裂，写创造力如何在春天枯死。我写“我”的裂缝，而不是“我”的完美。
I’m not a writer, and I’ll never be someone who makes a living from words. I write these pieces the same way I write in a diary. No imagined reader. No need to perform. Just me, writing for myself.
我不是作家，将来也不会成为以文字为生的人。我写这些文字，不过正如我写日记一样。没有预设读者，不必假装给谁看，除了我自己。
I call this book Selfhood.
我把这本书叫做《自我性》。
The name came from a suggestion by artificial intelligence. It read through my writing and concluded that “Selfhood” was a word I had coined. It’s rooted in my own way of thinking about individual existence—not as some abstract “self,” but as a spiritual core that grows, sees, and acts.
名字来自人工智能的建议。它通读了我的文字，认为“自我性”是我原创词汇，它直接源自我对个体存在的哲学思考，它不是抽象的“自我”泛谈，而是有成长性、觉察性、主动性的精神内核。
Selfhood is a process. It’s me peeling myself away from the roles I’ve played,
“自我性”是一个过程，是我从“角色”里剥离出“我”，
and separating my voice from the voices of the collective and society.
从集体和社会的声音中，分离出自己。
It’s less of a noun and more of a verb—a word that records the process of becoming who you are.
与其说它是一个名词，不如说它是一个动词，记录一个人成为他自己的历程。