How much do we know ourselves?
When we were little, people would ask us – what do you want and what do you like? We would rattle out an answer. From that age came the idea we have to know ourselves. As we grow up we are supposed to know what we would like to eat, what we wear and who we would talk to. Then what courses we would take and what profession we want to enter into. Somehow we managed to give answers. Once after college we have to be absolutely sure what we are going to be doing. What we want to become. All these would put so much pressure on us. But also in so many occasions we are caught confused and without an answer. We blabber something. Some of us are more stable than others, we are able to somewhat know ourselves. But we find self-knowledge is not static. It changes with time. At some point we lose interest in ourselves. We go by the society. Money, reputation, ideas and so on. We lose ourselves in the bargain.
Knowing ourselves becomes imperative once again. We cannot afford to be superficial. What is that we ignore about us? Our instincts. Are we self-preservation, social or one-to-one? These greatly define our scope of living. What are our energies? Is it inaction, penetration or understanding? What do we see ourselves as? Doer, Thinker or Feeler? Do we move towards people, move away from them or move against? You might notice things are already getting serious and interesting. And these are important. What are our occupational instincts? Is it commercial, service or learning? We all have default personalities. We fail to see there may be much more to us than we what we know. What are our drives? Preservative, Destructive or Creative? What is our disposition? Are we aggressive, compliant or withdrawn? Are we impulsive, structured or spontaneous? Yes it matters to enrich our lives. What are our values? Are they intrinsic like love and satisfaction? Are they extrinsic like status and prestige? Are they systemic like affiliation and lineage? As you can sense these are all quite advanced. It will take some time to learn where we stand in all these. The truth is many of us get so busy with life that we don’t know ourselves anymore. We don’t observe ourselves so much. And yet when we do there is so much relief. We are able to tell our boss quietly what we are and what we can possibly do. Some of them might listen. Some of us change our professions. We choose a different source of making a living based on knowledge about us. We begin to have better relationships. There is more to it than this. We can transform. From being incredibly shy to have intrinsic values we can think of being extrinsic. We can be more penetrative and more knowledge and work oriented in our workplace rather than be lazy or understanding. We can question our compliance and be less so. These changes will bring tremendous transformation of our perspectives. Where we previously hated our commercial organization we would now be okay with it. Where we previously thought creative was cool, we wouldn’t hesitate to destroy a theory. This is what life is. This is how it works. Self-knowledge is freedom.