On Early Childhood
ground and let her be mobile in a vertical position without any external support. Yet all these activities seem related to her learning to walk. That evening at the age of fourteen months she did walk. She walked on her own and with the intent to walk. I was about two yards away from her when it happened. She showed me that she walked up to me rather than that she walked up to me. It was through her activity of walking that she was involved in discovering herself being so. That the activity could be used as a means of transporting herself from one place to another was in those moments only incidentally true for her. She looked totally involved in actualizing herself through her act of walking. Also, there was the presence of a choice in her act of walking. Since she could move forward in a sitting position, she could have come to me that way. Since she could talk, she could have asked me to come to her or to take her to where I was. But she chose to stand up and take those few steps on her own. The term “choice” in the sense of a preference from among the alternatives, however, is applicable only from an onlooker’s point of view. On Uma’s part the choice was an existential one. Her act of walking, as if, was in unison with her being an existential one. Her act of walking, as if, was in unison with her being in awareness of what there was for her to do with herself in those moments, and therefore in a way, she had no choice but be this. Uma did not walk again in this way for the next two to three months. The one activity that she engaged in day after day for weeks seems to me to be directly related to her awareness of herself having walked a few steps on her own. Having found out what it was to walk, she decided to give herself intensive practice in walking. She would walk fast and faster up and down alongside the length of the sofa in our living room. She would not be holding on to the sofa necessarily, or leaning against it for support. But she had it there to practice her walking along side it. It was an amusing sight to watch her so fully taken by this frantic activity. Also, she would stand up holding on to things and take steps backwards, forwards and sideways. She would climb on the sofa or an 10