In a movie I watched last night one of the characters said “You have to know others to better know yourself”
That statement caught my attention and made me loose concentration on what came next. Is it true? I always thought it was the other way around, that maybe if/when I know myself better I would tend to understand others better. But my question today is how important is it to know ourselves. We spend a lifetime trying to get to know this weird creature (us) and every time we think we are almost close to making the acquaintance this shadow eludes us. It happened so many times that I almost lost interest in finally meeting the me I am so looking forward to understand. The variables are infinite, the effects of circumstances are immense that i think it is almost impossible for us to be the same person twice.
A friend keeps teasing me about a statement I used to use a lot “I know myself, when X happens I act in this way and when Y happens I act in that way” and you know what, it is so untrue. I don't know myself any better than the next person knows me. If you put all the variables in a scientific equation consisting of circumstances, frame of mind, physical well being, chemistry of the body at a given second, actions and reactions of others, even the temperature outdoors etc etc… I bet you no machine in the world can resolve it.
Have you ever noticed how some people almost never think about this issue, nor are they interested in getting to know themselves better? I think I can easily make the assumption that, in general, they seem to be happier. They take themselves as they are, and they are OK with how they act and react without much analysis or judgment, and they seem happier, even things seem to come to them much easier and in a more pleasant manner than calculating rationalizing individuals. Basically they treat themselves very much the way we keep insisting on others to treat us !!
Maybe we should not really know us.
1 comment:
You have to start knowing yourself so well that you begin to know other people. A piece of us is in every person we can ever meet. John D. MacDonald. I love this quote, which brings me straight to my point, I believe we are a part of everyone around us, a conundrum of emotions and actions that derived from our past experiences, our childhood is our base, our blueprint, our foundation. What did you love to do when you were a kid? Did you scrapbook? Did you play video games, or write poems? The authenticity of childhood interests cannot be denied. By revisiting the things you used to love to do as a kid, you will be amazed at the passion within you just waiting to be rediscovered, try it, it will prove my point.
I believe everyone knows himself; the ones that think they don’t are just too hypercritical and feel the urge to obliterate past experiences and relationships that led them to their present self. The people that “never think about this issue”, well I feel that’s because they accept their past and present and anticipate their future, they know that they are intricately intertwined with the people that crossed their path, their experiences and the actions they took, and they simply embrace them.
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