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If what we are is a "project towards the world", then the Cartesian cogito ("I think") becomes I act; my existence as a self is not that of a single continuing "consciousness", or a series of such consciousnesses, but a single "experience" in which I, as an embodied human being, engage with the world. My body is not, as objectivists might have it, an instrument loosely attached to me that I can use, but is me myself as involved with the world and as expressing myself in its movements. If I am an embodied subject, then the thoughts, feelings, intentions, wishes and so on that I have necessarily find expression in my body, not only in my actions and the objects I manipulate in them or the environment that I change by them, but even in the very characteristics of the body itself. Conversely, my body for me, or what Merleau-Ponty calls le corps propre, is not some kind of mechanistic system loosely attached to me, but is my mode of expression of my thoughts, feelings, intentions, and so on. A person's body can become what Merleau-Ponty beautifully describes as "the eloquent relic of an existence."

Because the world is so full of death and horror, I try again and again to console my heart and pick the flowers that grow in the midst of hell.