To Know Thyself

To truly know oneself is one of the most difficult, but also the best, things a human can accomplish. A thorough mental and emotional self-examination can be heart-wrenching and painful, but if it is successful, leaves the examiner with a thorough knowledge of his inner workings. To know oneself is to be able to understand what is the best course of action in a given situation--someone with self-knowledge will restrain his initial reaction, examine it, ponder its causes and possible effects, and then select a new reaction if one is deemed more beneficial to his goal. Most of all, to know and understand oneself requires complete honesty. This honesty does not have to be shared with the world, but as long as a man can look into himself and be completely honest with himself about everything he sees and feels, he can know himself.

Someone with thorough self-knowledge is able to accept the consequences of his actions, whether good or bad. Troublesome situations, to someone with knowledge of himself, are the results of carefully plans, and cannot be altered. A person without self-knowledge, finding himself in an unfortunate situation, tends to rationalize and deny his actions and the desires that led him there. Someone with self-knowledge will be able to seek out his flaws in character and decide when to allow them free reign and when to hold them back. This is not to say that he will be free of vices or socially unacceptable ideas, but he will accept that he posesses these qualities and that he has the power to control them or unleash them as he desires. Self-knowledge gives the person who claims it complete control over himself.


It's extremely difficult for me to put a name to my greatest weakness. It's partly sloth and partly disinterest in the normal goings-on of life. It usually manifests itself in what would usually be called procrastination. It's not that I don't do things I'm told to do because I'm lazy, it's that I find other things that are so utterly fascinating that I can't possibly wait to do them. I begin to write my essays the day they're assigned, with high hopes that I'll finish them early, but some nagging idea will cause me to leave the computer to look up some arcane fact that has nothing to do with what I'm supposed to be doing. Before long, I will have learned a great deal about something that nobody would ever expect a teenage girl to care about, but I've gotten nowhere on my essay. Occasionally, I write about something completely different from the assigned topic, like the reflection upon seeing a pencil that I wrote several years ago. This hasn't always turned out badly: some of the most interesting things I know were learned when I was supposed to be learning something else, and I always manage to get my essays in on time.

I also have a tendency to not really care about the things that the rest of society says I should care about. I'm not all that interested in donating my money to charities; I'd rather use it to fund my own college education. That's not to say that I don't contribute to these things when I'm asked, it's just that I feel like I have other things to think about. I still don't have my driver's license, unlike most other people my age, because I don't really feel like calling the driving school and rescheduling the class I missed. I'd like to be able to legally drive, but the stress and drama of getting a license, coupled with the fact that I won't be able to afford a car for at least another ten years, makes me want to ignore this demand on me in favor of more interesting activities.

I've tried to do a lot to combat this weakness, but I've rarely succeeded. I frequently write to-do lists, leave myself notes, and schedule my days so that no time is left for fooling around. However, I can't seem to get myself to follow the lists--I always make up excuses to not do such-and-such activity if I feel like something else has got to get done first. On the rare occasion where I do successfully follow my schedules, the rewards (not having to rush, having enough time for sleep) are beneficial enough to make me want to concentrate on what I'm supposed to be doing rather than what I want to be doing. However, it's rare that I can make myself want to achieve that reward again.

I think my greatest strength is directly related to my greatest weakness. Though I have trouble applying myself to things that I don't care about, when I find something that I get excited about, I get really excited. This is the only thing I have going for me in many situations--since I'm not exceptionally intelligent or artistic and I'm not athletic in the slightest, enthusiasm and curiosity count for a lot. I've spent hundreds of hours (a great many of them designated homework-hours) looking up flight training manuals on the internet, teaching myself about subatomic particles from the parts in the back of the physics textbooks that we aren't taught in school, and climbing trees to photograph sunsets. I've learned about Old English heraldry, destroyed computers, and studied the basics of a dozen different languages not because I was told to, or even encouraged to, but because I really, really wanted to.

I suppose these qualities have made me slightly more perceptive to the world in general-- they may have improved my vocabulary or opened my mind to some new idea or concept. If you look at it realistically, though, what my enthusiasm has brought me so far is not much more than a willingness to try new things and a head full of random facts. I have no idea how I'm going to apply my strengths to making a future for myself, but I'm going to try to do something that doesn't compromise my need for something to get really excited about or something new to investigate.


Over the course of writing this entry, I've done a lot of thinking about my emotions, desires, reactions to events, and past experiences. Writing about strengths and weaknesses obviously requires that the writer understand himself well enough to both recognize these qualities in himself and to put them into words. Writing about weaknesses requires the writer to give up any shame he feels at sharing his flaws with the audience, and to break through any false self-image that he has constructed to protect himself from the truth about his negative aspects. Writing about strengths, while less difficult than weaknesses, requires that the modest writer give up his modesty and speak the absolute truth, while the proud and self-centered writer must sift through his percieved good qualities to find one that truly qualifies as a strength.

While writing, I've found things about myself that I'm not completely sure I've ever found before. I've realized that I should try harder to do what I'm obliged to do, which will leave me ample time to do what I really want to do. I've also realized that self-knowledge is not for those who dislike a rude shock to their carefully constructed lives. However, the people who understand themselves least are the ones who would most benefit from a thorough emotional and mental self-examination.