It is impossible to explain what it means to actually know yourself unless you do actually know yourself. And it is impossible to know yourself, unless you have faced every situation that is possible to face and have reflected on the patterns of actions which you have shown. As such, I cannot say that I know myself completely. However, I will attempt to explain what I have found in my search to know myself and, while I know no one else’s journey is exactly the same as mine, hopefully what I have found for myself will be fairly universal. I will use “you” and “yourself,” rather than “one” and “oneself” because I feel it makes the writing more accessible.
The journey to find who you are is one that is continually taking place. As you face the world around you, making decisions or choosing not to, your character is revealed. As an individual, you can choose to contemplate your actions and attempt to discover who you are or you can act flippantly, without regard to who you may be. I believe, however, that everybody to some extent or another does chose to reflect on their actions. That introspection must continue to take place so that you may become one step close to knowing who you are.
The problem with discovering who you are is that you are biased. You will never be able to understand truthfully who you are at any given moment, because your observation will be clouded by who you think you are, or who you would like to be. This relation has been discussed by Werner Heisenberg in his Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, which states that the act of observation necessarily changes that which is observed. While he was referring to the impossibility of knowing both the location and velocity of an electron, this principle is equally valid in the search for discovering yourself. When you pinpoint any facet of who you are, your judgments on whether it is a positive or negative trait will automatically cause you to change, either to emphasize the importance of the trait or minimize its value to you.
And, of course, once you realize the impossibility of knowing yourself completely, your next question would be, “then why bother trying?” Apart from the fact that it is really fun to ponder who you are (It is an easy way to knock off a couple of hours whenever you have nothing to do, and it gives you an ample supply of information from which to write a humanities blog), knowing yourself is a good way to achieve happiness. Unless you are a person who has never doubted themselves in their life, the quest to find who you are will allow you to tackle any aspects about yourself which you are unhappy with. If you can pinpoint a trait which results in your unhappiness, it makes it possible to change. While knowing yourself does not by any means imply that your life will improve, not knowing yourself makes true change impossible.
And this is my greatest weakness. I live in my head, leaving quite infrequently to interact with other people or implement the ideas which I am constantly developing. This problem of mine has come about because of the influences of my family. My house is not one in which the open forum of opinions is encouraged or even accepted. I therefore began to contain my thoughts within my head as a means of remaining safe. I only discovered that I was doing this a few years ago, when I began to see how differently I acted compared to my peers, but have attempted to overcome this defect ever since. Even today, when I try to engage in what I have long thought of as frivolous communication, conversation for the sake of conversation, I find it difficult to sustain myself for any appreciable amount of time. The problem is that I remain in the same environment at home and so change has come slowly. I feel confident however, that once I leave my home for college, I will be able to mold my personality into one which is more socially acceptable.
What I believe to be my greatest strength was also spawned from my experience at home. As I found my life pushing continually downward, I began to realize that it was not my fault. The poor decisions of my parents, while they definitely affected my life, should not be the focus of who I am. With this realization, I began to look at life with, what I believe to be, a practical outlook. Every decision I make should be made to improve my life, not just for the sake of living. For example, I have learned not to stress out over homework/college stuff/any of those other generally stressful things. By stressing, I make myself unhappy without actually improving the quality of my work. There is no benefit, so it not worth doing. Another area in which practical thought has helped to improve my life is allowing me to reveal who I am and what experiences I have had. Every time I release a little piece of information which I have held hidden within me for years, I find myself feeling a little revealed. When I discovered this, and realized how much this helped me to remain sane, I so made the decision not to hide myself any longer, despite the possible embarrassment I might face. While this may seem like a relatively minor issue, it has truly improved my life.
Thinking about my strengths and weaknesses is, for me, not very challenging. I am always evaluating my actions looking for faults to improve and assets which afford me pride. The difficulty came in writing. Because my thoughts are constantly shifting and following trails of thought in different directions, writing down one set of ideas is a fairly logical order takes time. I must indulge my head in following these trails before returning to the task at hand. Also, like I explained in the previous paragraph, I find solace in revealing who I am, and so rather enjoyed the experience of writing this. I do not feel my strengths and weakness, the essence of who I am, is something to shy away from, but rather, it is something that should be embraced and contemplated.
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