Know Thyself.

‘Know thyself.’

This is the one quote that Socrates lived and died by. It is inscribed onto the Temple of Apollo located in Delphi, Greece.

Socrates claimed that the unexamined life was not living. What is a life worth living if you don’t know why you are here?

In a world constantly urging conformity, embracing your true self can feel revolutionary and honestly, scary.

People see your true colours, and what if your friends don’t like you anymore just because you don’t behave, dress, talk a certain way?

We have evolved to become social creatures—in a way that all of your lives are a culmination of all the traits of the people we interact with.

Just a mixed concoction of the sum people we’ve met in our lives.

That way, everyone plays a small part of every other person’s life.

That’s why they say everyone that comes into your life plays a role. Only time will tell whether that role is a hero, a villain, or just a NPC.

Your opinions shape a part of my decisions.

No one’s truly ‘pure’, unadulterated.

You want to become a doctor just because your parents said so, and you suddenly like biology after learning about it.

We all have experienced not liking something when it’s first presented to us, and since it’s new and we just assume it’s out of our comfort zone.

But then few days/weeks down the line, we take a liking to that idea.

The question we often fail to ask is:

Are the things we want what we truly want?

Do we WANT the things we want?

How do we know that things we want to do, are truly the things we actually wanna do, and not because someone else wants us to do it?

You do it, through desire.

Arrive at a place where what you want is what you want to want, through desire.

Being Yourself

Why does being ourselves seem so hard?

It’s because people want to be accepted. It’s constant validation checks 24/7.

We all do it sub-consciously.

From the way we dress, sit, walk, talk; it’s all because we feel that someone is watching every single twitch of a muscle fibre we make.

This is called the Spotlight Effect, one of the common thinking errors.

We constantly feel that someone is watching us, so we consciously do everything we’re doing and talking.

Problem is, the Spotlight Effect is more common that you think to the point where, all of us are under the illusion that everyone else is watching us, leading to the fact that no one, is watching no one.

We all live in our heads too much when in reality, everyone else is too busy focusing on their own problems and muscle fibres.

So if that’s the case, why not be you?

Being yourself is to be naturally you.

Take off that mask. Do things you desire to do.

Not things you are meant to do, or should do, or told to do.

Do things that you WANT to do.

Find your WANT.

Ask what you want, to want.

What you want may not be what most people want, and that’s totally fine.

We all move in life at different paces, different starts and destinations.

You can never really gauge if someone is ‘doing better’ than someone else.

J. Cole said it best;

‘Ain’t no such thing as a life that’s better than yours.’

Outcomes

Being yourself is not just about being the ‘true version of yourself’, because I feel like there is no true version of ourselves.

We are flux. Entropy.

A vessel of constantly changing mass and matter till the end of time.

Then how does one truly find themselves?

You will go through phases in life, where your character traits might differ a little from past to present.

The way you handle arguments may change. You may become alot calmer over time.

But somethings you’ll find, that you feel you should never change.

These are your core values. Your morals.

The very ether of what makes you, you.

Because everything else about you is just an amalgamation of character traits and habits of other people.

So when we strip all that down, we are left with the core element, the nucleus of what you are.

That, should never change.

Find your core values.

Find habits and traits that you feel is what you’re most comfortable with—that makes life easier to live.

And trust me this is no overnight journey.

This may take months, years, your whole lifetime probably.

Know thyself.

Be the purest form of you.

What makes you, you?

It may take a lifetime finding that answer,

but the journey is what makes it purposeful.

Live in the present. Live for now.

Live.

I’ll see you next week. 🧿