knowing yourself

May 5, 2024

How Many Selves Do You Have?

Do you know Stan? You might think you do, but how much of Stan’s life and personality are you aware of? Does having lunch with him three times yearly reveal all there is to know? Or is he a Zoom buddy who doesn’t exist for you below the belt?

Have you seen the fine fellow angry, sad, lonely, or excited? How often have you witnessed his behavior in the moment he succeeds or fails?

Turn the questions around. What portion of your temperament and dark side is your friend cognizant of?

Indeed, how much do you understand yourself?

Léon Bloy wrote:

There is no human being on earth who is capable of declaring who he is. No one knows what he has come to this world to do, to what his acts, feelings, ideas correspond, or what his real name is, his imperishable Name in the registry of light. (L’Ame de Napoleon, 1912).

We all know ourselves from the inside and cannot experience what others take in from their perspective outside of us. Each of us has access to emotion, pain, anxiety, happiness, lust, dreams, judgment, and many other elements unavailable to those who see and hear us.

When we talk about knowing the full range of our nature, our internal assessment—accurate or not— dominates our thoughts and evaluations.

Even so, this source of awareness is incomplete.

Protective psychological defense mechanisms hide facets of our personalities from consciousness. Onlookers may recognize signs of depression in us before we do. A lack of energy, tone of voice, facial expression, and sensitivity are aspects of what we offer in an unhappy state, even if we don’t know it.

Men and women deny, rationalize, and repress some of what is inside while projecting their troubles onto outsiders.

Strangers or acquaintances judge us based on first impressions, an up or down day, appearance, or how we are described on social media. Their beliefs about political affiliations or sexual preferences can color, enlarge, shade, or diminish insights when we size up another. Nationality, tone of voice, wit, and religion fuel instantaneous affections, disappointments, or indifference.

Since 21st-century technology allows rapid long-distance communication, humans are vulnerable to extreme misrepresentation. Smaller communities and repeated face-to-face interaction are less available today to inform others of our true nature—and we of theirs.

Thus, we have become the potential objects of second-hand opinions of the most unfavorable type. Moreover, what we infer when speaking to someone on a screen doesn’t always weigh the unusual quality of this kind of familiarity, full of pixelated strangers and computer friends.

That vulnerability extends to what is said about us by those who have some experience of who we are or claim to possess unique insight without evidence. Their notions play on rumors, fake news, and the ability to hide themselves while vilifying the object of their contempt.

The dangers of opening our souls to acquaintances are exacerbated when they appear sunny, happy, untroubled, and good-natured. The less secure find interactions with such persons lead them to compare their insides to their counterpart’s outsides.

Unattractive aspects, including the details of personal problems, are often kept secret for fear of negative judgments, unwanted advice, and the fear of becoming fodder for gossip.

Did I hear you say your understanding of yourself is accurate? Consider driving habits. Ninety percent of U.S. accidents are caused by human error, but 73% of drivers think they are better than average behind the wheel. Homo sapiens enjoy the capacity to shine a favorable light on themselves with little awareness.

Adults can be like teens struggling with an identity crisis. Personal choices then determine which self to put on display and with whom. 

Perhaps dear friends get a rarely-seen version. Therapists, ideally, evoke the most forthright and open individual. One would hope the existence of a “negotiating” version of you emerges to buy a car or sell a house, but not with those who are closest, including children or a spouse.

There is one other persona I haven’t mentioned—the one who will turn up tomorrow—your future self. Events of consequence, such as situations requiring risk, chance, loss, trauma, triumph, love, and raising offspring, can modify a person.

There could be several new versions ahead for the one that goes by your name, with no small part due to aging. Altered future selves are inevitable, including those created by the desire to change one’s life.

If possible, you may find it most satisfying to have only one version of who you are: the truest one. This would allow you to be genuine to all who know you, not role-playing different characters to fit their expectations.

Life is easier this way.

The best of your time ahead depends partly on what you make of it. Like an unfinished sculpture, it is in your hands.

Though the sculpture is never completed, remember this: it is the only “selfie” that matters.

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All the photos are the work of Laura Hedien, with her kind permission: Laura Hedien Official Website.

At the top is a Supercell Storm with Lightening Over a Combine Near Springfield, CO, 12/16/23. It is followed by versions of The Wave in Coyote Buttes, AZ, all from 2024.

October 25, 2020

Why We Don’t Always Know Ourselves and Why That’s a Good Thing

Some of my best friends don’t know themselves well. Moreover, there is often value in not knowing. Nonetheless, both those with lots of self-awareness and those without tend to overrate their knowledge of “who they are.”

We humans benefit from believing our march through life is an honorable endeavor. Most of us stop at red lights, let pedestrians cross, and smile when a stranger says hello.

Few take glee in admitting they’ve harmed others, broken rules undercover, and spoken untruth. We prefer to believe we deserve whatever we’ve achieved, rather than attributing our triumphs to cheating.

When a man acts beneath his best, he tends to justify his actions. Sometimes the reason he gives to himself is loyalty. At other times his sense of unfairness justifies employing the identical ruthless tactics the enemy uses against him.

Another category of rationalization includes survival in a competitive world. If you work in a dark-sided corporate or political culture, continued employment might demand persuading yourself, “this is just the way things are done.”

All of us travel through an imperfect world of flawed inhabitants, not an idealistic one. As we grow up, experience reveals the best man doesn’t always win, power and money increase mating opportunities, and who you know sometimes trumps what you know.

The adaptation to conditions “as they are” can evoke less than saintly behavior.

You might wonder why we possess this readiness to violate the messages we hope our kids learn in their religious education. In part, we must credit our resourceful ancestors.

In wartime, periods of scarcity, or episodes of other physical dangers, they used all their know-how and ingenuity to survive. Sometimes deception saved a life, as did theft when their child or tribe confronted famine. Strength, smarts, and strategy, along with viciousness, defeated enemies.

Can you imagine your chances if you lacked any motivation to act in your own interest? Two-thousand years ago, Rabbi Hillel, a Jewish sage, raised this issue and more:

If I am not for myself, who will be for me? If I am not for others, what am I?

A too accurate peek at our mirror image allows uncomfortable truths concerning ourselves and our beloved social circle.

Every successful marriage, for example, values the spouse for more than what he is. A loss of trust might follow from full recognition of the worst in those around us, forcing a crippling exaggeration of danger.

The magnification of personal defects also creates a frightful sight. Without psychological shielding, the soul is brought to its knees. One’s life might be reinterpreted as a fraud. How could we function in the world without a few of the lies told by ourselves to ourselves?

With a built-in capacity for at least a bit of self-deception, we face away from weaknesses like an unbridled penchant for antagonism or the avoidance of confrontation. Many of us project our shaded motives and dispositions on those different from us in race, religion, or politics.

Blindness to our situation frequently leads to emotional pain and poor choices. When the discomfort becomes considerable, therapists are consulted. The unveiling of revelations, however, must involve a gradual and careful process. The therapist shouldn’t disarm us by obliterating the beliefs on which we lean.

As Marshall Greene wrote in 1997, defenses help “the patient ward off disturbing feelings such as anxiety, anger, disgust, depression, envy, jealousy, guilt and shame.”

Counselors grasp this. Each of them encounters a phenomenon called “resistance in the service of the ego.” The psychologist takes care not to approach the client as though his mind is a walnut requiring a hammer blow to crack it.

The ache of past hurts, as well as the stark and startling acknowledgment of character limitations, can sink the patient before he learns to swim. Clients must float before the internal uncovering strips him of defensive buoyancy and his long-established tool kit of life skills.

The ancient Greek Temple of Apollo included the inscription “Know thyself” in its forecourt. Perhaps the designer should have considered a safer alternative:

“Know thyself (but not too much)”

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The first image comes from an unknown Google source. The second is the work of Loveteamin. Finally, Barlow in Hiding is the work of Andrew Smith. The last two pictures are sourced from Wikimedia Commons.

If you are interested in powerful theatrical representations of families with an uncomfortable relationship with the truth of who they are, you might read or watch Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman or Eugene O’Neill’s Long Day’s Journey Into Night.

August 15, 2013

Turning Points

256px-Korean_Traffic_sign_(U-Turn).svg

A few weeks ago I was with two friends, one of whom very abruptly became angry with the other over something that seemed to me quite small. A difference of opinion, as it turned out, about a political matter. Very angry and very small, at least in the sense that the issue wasn’t important to their well-being or anything that was in their control. It was triggered by an everyday observation about the behavior of one particular politician. You’ve probably heard or made similar comments yourself.

To me, however, it was stunning. Why? Because, in that moment, I saw something that I sometimes do: make a fuss with my wife over a subject of no real consequence, even though it tends not to be about politics. And, I’ll tell you what, what I saw wasn’t pretty. I’m sure it is every bit as unfortunate when I do it as when it happens between these two friends. For me it was a turning point. I have been much different since that day. More than once I’ve replayed in my head what I saw happening in front of me. I’m hoping that the change in me lasts and am writing this to keep myself on target.

I imagine that when most of us think of the idea of a personal turning point, we conjure up a more operatic circumstance. Something about death or winning (or losing) the presidency or falling in love, to name just a few possibilities. But, sometimes a turning point can be as unremarkable as the very personal one I just described. The kind of event that is inwardly dramatic, but not outwardly dramatic. The kind that has to do with an “aha” moment, the self-knowledge it brings, and a change in behavior because of it.

Put differently, turning points involve both what you experience and how you reflect on that experience. Moreover, that self-reflection must lead to a permanent change in conduct. Yet the trigger needn’t be theatrical. The event I just mentioned was compelling only because of the meaning I gave it. To anyone else watching, it would have been soon forgotten.

Here is a rather different kind of turning point, quite a contrast to the one I just portrayed. It is outwardly dramatic as well as inwardly dramatic. It changed how a teenager led the remaining 55 years of his life. Just reading this brief account might change yours: Turning Point.

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The image above is a Korean Traffic “U-turn” Sign by P.Ctnt, sourced from Wikimedia Commons.