When I was a kid, I kept running into a Hegelian problem. I lost this memory of my problem until I regained it in Chinese school.

My Chinese school textbook was pretty standard. The first words that it taught us, because the textbook was made for people who were not new to language but were coming into Chinese learning from English, was 你 (you) and 我 (I/me). The textbook introduced Chinese to us using the following standard phrase:

你好. (Hello).
你好. (Hello).
你好吗? (Are you good?)
我很好. (I'm good).

To those who have learned another language, this kind of phrasing probably sounds familiar. You tend to learn concepts like you and me, ich and dich, je and tu, or yo and tu pretty early on when you learn a language. The idea is that you have to learn how to refer to yourself first before you can talk about doing anything. It goes pronoun, verb, and noun. The adjectives come later.

When my mom saw what we were learning in Chinese school, she started laughing. Apparently, the words "you" and "me" were one of the last words that I learned. They were very difficult words. I had learned how to speak coherently and understand everything going on around me, how to communicate well, while still struggling with the concept of you and me. It got to the point where even my mom got confused, had started to say "me" when she meant me.

I just could not get it. For a very long time. I could not understand that 我 shifted in meaning depending on who was doing the speaking. I only talked in third person and I had no idea what 你 meant. I was perfectly fine expressing my mind and understanding what was going on without ever using the words you and me in a natural sentence.

Recently, I thought about why. I realized that no one, when speaking Chinese, really says the words you and me.

Children find the most uncommon words to be the hardest to pick up and understand. If you grow up in a world where no one really uses the words you and me, then you will find it hard to understand what these words and concepts mean.

Chinese is a language where you don't really need to use the words you and me. If you ask someone if they've eaten, you're less likely to hear 你吃了吗? (Have you eaten?) and more likely to hear 吃了吗 (Eaten yet?). When answering, saying something like 我吃了 (I have eaten) sounds rigid and weird. You're more likely to forego the word "I" entirely and just say 吃了 (Ate).

Sometimes, you might use the pronoun 俺. 俺 does not sound weird and formal the way 我 does. 俺吃了 or 回去俺就吃 sounds a lot more natural and normal than 我吃了 or 回去我就吃 which sounds cold and strange. 俺 happens to be both we (plural) and I (singular).

I was thinking about the Hegelian crisis that I ran into as a kid, how difficult the concept of you and me was at first, and about how we assume that the concept of the self/other to be foundational to be our metaphysical ordering of the world. In horoscopic astrology, we assume that the first house where the natal chart begins to be I in the singular sense. We assume that the seventh house, which opposes the first house, to be you in the singular sense.

A lot of us seem to struggle with understanding what that means. These are the two houses that I usually get the most questions about.

You and me being the most important words in a language system isn't that standard. I also happen to consult with a lot of people who may not have spoken an European language as their first language. I'm not fluent in any other languages outside of English and Chinese but I don't think that this confusion I hear so much about around the self/other, around the first and seventh houses, is a big coincidence.

"I know my first house is me but isn't it also how other people see me/the me that exists only in other people's eyes?"

"I know my seventh house is other people but isn't also my relationships that I am in?"

When your word for the self is already plural, when you are able to speak with fluency without ever using the words you and me, when most books that you read do not contain the words you or me—how could this concept of the self/other not disorient?

I think that English also contains a confusion around you and me. English has the abstract you, the one that you use to refer to people at large, the you that you use when you include the self into the you. Hegel used master/slave to illustrate power and oppression. Simone de Beauvoir named the binary of the self/other to show how power works through difference, the self being the normative and the other being the deviant. Audre Lorde destabilized de Beauvoir's binary. She wrote about those of us who live in the house of difference, those of us who live in the house of difference are forced to name ourselves "you," the derivative "you," and urged us to bring the "we" back into that "you".

Once, when I was a teenager, I read a book about how using the word "you" to refer to yourself in your journals is a sign of an unstable sense of self. Mature people are supposed to use "I." A lot of us, it seems, have an issue with the you and me pronouns.

Maybe this blurring exists astrologically too. The two houses, houses five and nine, which affirm and express the first house, the house of "I", sit in the western half of the chart, the half which depicts your social life. The two houses, houses three and eleven, which affirm and support the seventh house, the house of "you", sit in the eastern half of the chart which depicts your sense of agency. The fifth and ninth houses, the houses of play and knowledge, are the houses of "I" which exists in the "you". The third and the eleventh houses, the houses of kinship and friendship, are the houses of "we" which already exist in the "I."

And maybe the first and seventh houses cannot be read independently because they do not exist independently. They must be read in context, in relation to the houses which affirm their meanings and the houses which destabilize their intentions. The most riveting thing that we can do with these six houses, the houses which set the you apart from the me, is to walk through them seeking the we.