Pathwalking 54
Do you know yourself?
I have encountered far more people for whom the answer to that question is No, rather than Yes.
What does that even mean?
As a society, we have become extremely complacent about our lives. I say over and over again that people too often just let life live them. Get up in the morning, go to work, go home, veg in front of the TV a couple hours, go to bed. Rinse, repeat. We look to deflect blame or find quick fixes more easily than looking to ourselves for the answers.
It is far easier to allow yourself to be distracted. It is easier to blame your job, the clock, the kids, the pets, the co-workers, the friends, the family, the weather…take your pick. And casting about all that blame and finding all those excuses drives us further and further away from ourselves.
Who am I?
It’s not my name, my job, or my relationships that define this. It is who I see myself as when I look deep. And I a thinker or a feeler? A doer or a dreamer? Blind or clear sighted? It is knowing that the answer is seldom black and white, and that it is always changing that begs the reason to ask the question rather often.
This might seem like a lot of work. What’s the point of asking myself who I am if the answer is always changing? The more you ask the question, the smaller and more subtle the changes will be. The wider the gap between times you ask the question, the more change will have occurred.
I have been over this theme before. Life is constantly changing. Pathwalking is about having some control and direction over those changes. But if I do not know who I am as I start down this path, I am not going to get the result I want.
Do you REALLY know yourself, or do you know only an aspect of yourself? “Well we all have a face that we hide away forever, and we take them out and show ourselves when everyone has gone.” This line from Billy Joel’s The Stranger perfectly defines this. People put on different masks for different occasions.
Do you show the same person to your family as to your friends? How about coworkers? Do you show the same person to a random stranger on the street that you show your most intimate companion? In what ways do you change your facial expressions, tone, body language – depending on whom you are with? How does your thought process and reactions change?
If you can look at this and see that you make very few to no changes for different people you may be associating with, then the answer to the question is yes. But if you find that you put on a different mask depending on what group or person or persons you are with, the answer is clearly no.
I can’t be myself in front of my coworkers. I don’t want my lover to see my dark side. If I don’t play the clown, my friends won’t like me. All of these are masks we wear, and I would postulate we wear them more for ourselves than those around us.
If I know myself, then I do not need to put on a mask for anyone. Why? Because in knowing who I am, I know what I want and need. I also know that I do not need approval or validation from an outside source, and as such do not need to mask my appearance from one group to the next.
“This above all: to thine own self be true.” – Polonius in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet. A fictional character, to be sure, but the meaning of the statement is not diminished by that. Pathwalking is about choice. But to make choices and walk paths, to make the life I want for myself, who but myself must I be true to in order to succeed?
Everything comes from within. Success, satisfaction, happiness. Doesn’t matter, if it is real, it has come from within. The outside world can give you signs that you may be on the wrong path, as well as validation that you are on the right path. But you and you alone know if you are being true to yourself. And in order to be true to you, you have to know yourself.
If you do not ask the question because you do not think you will like the answer, it is imperative that you ask. If you are not content with the answer, guess who is the only person capable of changing it?
Do you know yourself?
This is the fifty-fourth entry in my series. These weekly posts are specifically about walking along the path of life, and my desire to make a difference in this world along the way. Thank you for joining me.
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