Be Yourself, If You Know Who You Are.

Just Be Yourself, how many times we get to hear that? Our parents, our teachers, in fact all the worldly quotes say so. But who are we, do we know who we are actually, before trying to be ourselves. No we don’t and if we think we do then I’m sorry to say we don’t, we just live in an illusion that we know but that’s just a vague image of ourselves which we see. Take it this way (metaphorically), we look through a window and call it a mirror.

Ironic as it is, knowing yourself is very difficult. We fail to understand the people with whom we spend all our time, all our life. It is said that “Conquering the world is easier than conquering yourself”. May be it is true. But why, why is it so hard??

Okay, tell me one thing, don’t you know your close friends very well, and 9 out of 10 times you can correctly predict what they would do. So, what does it prove? It proves that you know your friends more than you know yourself. Another irony!! Here’s the reason.

While judging others, we have only the dominant personality of the person, making judgement  easier. We don’t look into the chaos which would be going on inside him but since we are aware of his overall personality, the judgement which we make turns out to be correct mostly. But in case of judging ourselves we have all the data, all our personalities, sides and opinions. Hence it becomes a really tough job to consider any one of them prominent. It’s hard to ignore any of our personalities. And we may not judge ourselves as something bad even if we were. So it turns out that the biggest hindrance in knowing ourselves is the confusion between what personality we are and and what we want to be.

So, what do we do? How about seeing ourselves with eyes of others? Eyes of your close friends. Won’t it make things easier the way it made easier for us to judge other? Surprisingly, these eyes of others see those blind spots which we just can’t see ourselves. Here’s an analogy explaining this-

We can’t see the back of our head(blind spot) but it is still inside us,

We will need a mirror(a friend’s eye) in order for us to see it.

But this isn’t enough. It’s not sufficient to know yourself. We are not rock permanently set in our ways. We evolve over time. May be the current you  and past you are 2 totally different personalities.

We are the liquid, filling social containers,

We are  the Rubik’s Cube, we put on whichever face we choose appropriate to the situation,

We are the mirror reflecting whatever happens.

“The man who never alters his opinion is like standing water, and breeds reptiles of the mind”

Yes we do change, it’s the law of the nature. In this case can we really know ourselves? Let the mystery unfold and enjoy the ride along the way because hidden potential lies in unpredictability.

But at the same time no one can deny that building a relationship with your soul is the most amazing thing.

~Ero Sennin

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