“Know Thyself”
The Greek thinker rumbles from within!
“Know Thyself”
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For nearly a decade I’ve struggled with this concept, and I’ve heard it, read it from Plato and Socrates, pondered it, and sometimes just shrugged it off—admitting that, “yes” knowing yourself is important “duh! Moving on!”.
When reading Descarte in high school I struggled with the deconstructionist principles that the French Philosopher was arguing, reasoning through, and putting forth. Questions like, “is the world real?” “what is real?” “what is perception”, and all sorts of epistemological inner dialogues, contemplations, and discussions that would eventually be tied in with the Matrix, Neo, and Agent Smith. Just for clarification, the world is real, and if it’s not real there’s no reason for you to get angry with it or about this blog. As a teenager, my time pouring over such heady theoretical knowledge was spent with such passion, because I was looking for an answer to the question, “What can I trust?”
In this world we trust many things, and most people don’t give a second thought to what they trust. People trust the car to start, the chair to hold their weight, or a smart phone to find directions, and stepping out of the concrete simple aspects, we trust certain people to be there when we fall, money to give us what we want, or for fulfillment to come from success. Although, most of our time thinking about trust deals with people — entities that we interact with, get attached to, or dismiss.
Yet, “Knowing” Thyself holds for it a distinctly different tune, because there is a bit dissonance in even saying “know thyself”.
You might be asking, “What do you mean ‘know thyself’? Of course I know me. I am me. Anything that I’ve ever done has been me, and anything I will do will be me.”
There’s a good amount of truth in those statements, but there is a disparity to the epistemological references that I made above.
You may be familiar with yourself, but can you trust yourself? You may have been around yourself all the time, but do you know what you’re really about? What lights you up? What drags you down? What are your dreams? If you could do anything what would it be? and if you can answer these questions why haven’t you done or accomplished what you wanted yet?
This is the nature of “Knowing” Thyself, because the Bible warns us that “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)
“But I do know myself, so I don’t need to worry about any of that.”
I posit that perhaps you are deceived.
You are more elusive to you than you might think.
Everyone has a little bit of self-deception in them, and we can be downright blind to what is going on or what we are doing at times. Some classic examples are the drug addict who doesn’t think he has a problem with addiction, or the boss who chews out his employees for insignificant details, still maintaining that he doesn’t have anger issues. Many times we tell ourselves what we want to hear, or we tell ourselves what we’ve been told.
However, it’s our duty to know what is the real. Do I stay in bed to late? Am I too close to women that I’m not dating? Do I overthink things? Do I rely to much on feelings?
Valid questions.
It’s my job to know what’s going on with my feelings, what’s going on in my mind, why my mind went to that place, what I should do next, so that I know myself well enough to treat myself well by leading myself well. It’s impossible to take yourself where you want to go without spending time to get to know where you want to go.
The dead-end consequence of not knowing yourself will be other people telling you what’s best for you, and external stimuli wearing down the sense of self. Instead of working for what God has put in you someone else’s goals will become your life.
Over the past week, the idea of exposing the intimate details of myself that I never knew has taken hold of me. My discipler, Kyle, sat me down, and asked me to think about all my “buts”
To which I replied, “‘buts’?”
“Yes, I want you to think about all the ‘buts’. You have many ideas about things, but you seem to have unspoken ‘buts’ that disorient your resolutions. ‘This meal is good, BUT I wanted spaghetti for dinner’ ‘God is good, BUT I’m not sure if I trust Him.'”
He was exactly right.
My inner dialogues are complex and instant, but I need to take a look at them to reveal my core beliefs. I can tell myself what I believe, but that doesn’t mean I believe what I tell myself. It’s only until I can reason with myself about what I already believe that I can dethrone and set up a new set of beliefs, which is a heady idea.
I need to look at myself — to figure out — what I do — because why I do things — is sometimes hidden to me — but in order to move forward — I need to know why I do things — otherwise — I’ll continue to do the same things — that I’ve always done.
In Short: Me needs to know…well…Me–but I’m not showing me all at once.
It takes time, dedication, and questioning, but if I don’t do that work I may end up looking like Derek Zoolander: Staring into a puddle asking his own reflection “Who am I?” and the reflection answering back “I don’t know” with shrugs of consolation– saying, “I don’t know what to tell you kid”.
Forth with
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“Know Thyself”
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