Know Thyself
Socrates famously said, “the unexamined life is not worth living.”
Knowing yourself has extraordinary prestige in our culture. It has been framed as quite literally the meaning of life.
This idea of self-knowledge being the meaning of life yields many questions:
- Just why is self-knowledge such a prestigious good?
- Why is self-knowledge difficult to attain?
- What are the dangers that come with a lack of self-knowledge?
- What do we in fact need to know about ourselves?
- How do we come to learn such things?
What’s the point?
The most glaring and obvious reason to know yourself is that it leads to greater happiness and fulfillment.
We are all pretty crazy with our own set of idiosyncrasies and neuroses that if we don’t take the time to understand, we won’t know what we really want out of life.
It’s difficult to know yourself
Our society historically is very materialistic and does not value as much as it should self-reflection. 90s kids such as myself grew up in an environment where it was “manly” to suppress your feelings and emotions: a form of toxic masculinity.
Our feelings and emotions deeply affect us and need to be felt and understood to understand ourselves. This can be very difficult and requires active participation to process them.
Why is self-knowledge so important?
TODO
Dangers of not knowing yourself
TODO
Benefits of knowing yourself
TODO
How to get to know yourself
- Journaling is an effective way to process our emotions
- Psychotherapy is an effective tool for processing emotions
- Art as expression of emotion
👇 refactor this stuff based on ideas from Socrates and how to develop self-knowledge.
Due to our complex emotional depth that seems to define every aspect of our character, it’s important to fully understand our emotions to understand and know ourselves.
Emotions need to be felt to fully understand our thoughts, actions, and ultimately yourself.
Failing to fully understand yourself has real consequences. You will be at the whims of other people’s opinions not able to make clear decisions.
It’s especially important to understand yourself if you want a chance at any kind of fulfilling relationship with yourself or others.
Matrix “temet nosce” reference.