midnight's children

... who what am i? my answer: i am the sum total of everything that went before me, of all i have been seen done, of everything done-to-me. i am everyone everything whose being-in-the-world afected was affected by mine. i am anything that happens after i've gone which would not have happened if i had not come. nor am i particularly exceptional in this matter; each 'i', every one of the now-six-hundred-million-plus of us, contains a similar multitude. i repeat for the last time: to understand me, you'll have to swallow a world.