In our pre-meeting chat Sonali recounted how we have been meeting regularly every week for many months and how by now, we knew each other well. Rajesh responded jokingly that perhaps we know each other more than what we know about ourselves. What started as a joke took a serios turn and we wondered whether we knew ourselves well. It was proposed as a topic for the weekly meeting.

“Most people do not know much about themselves.”

We decided to check by noting down few points about what we knew about ourselves. I am easy going. I am introvert. I am lazy. I am clever. I am hard working and so on, we started describing ourselves. I tend to procrastinate. I tend to go in details. I tend to feel nervous and so on, we started describing our tendencies.

“Is it what you are or is the way of you behave?”

I was taken aback by the question. I had never thought about it that way. I thought that I knew myself. But now I realised that what I knew of myself was more about how I behave. And that Is not the same as knowing about me.

“What is important is to understand why we behave the way we behave.”

We can observe how we behave. We are also told by others about how we behave. But how to know about what is driving this behaviour? We checked with each other and realised that none of us knew how to do that.

“Most people are unclear about themselves because they do not have a good system with which to study themselves.”

As the statement settled within us, we realised that we have learned a lot about knowing the world, but we have been never taught about how to know ourselves. We have learned about physics and chemistry, about history and geography but almost nothing about ourselves. It dawned on us that what we thought we knew about ourselves was not knowledge but our opinion about ourselves. We had taken it for granted that we knew ourselves but none of us had studied it systematically.

“The system of Self Knowledge is a fundamentally important tool. With that you will discover areas of self-deception when faults are brought to light that you formerly considered to be outstanding merits.”

I always believed that one of my strengths was my insistence on perfection. I was proud of it. Now am I to learn that perhaps that was not a strength, but could be an area of weakness? This possibility was unsettling enough to get me excited to find out more about the system of self-knowledge.

“You should not believe that to know yourself you have to sit and meditate.”

This clarification pre-empted my guess about the system.

“To know yourself, you must study yourself in relation to the actual situations of your everyday life. You must consider the events that have happened to you in the past, your actual situation at present, and what you want to achieve in the future.”

I was beginning to get a glimpse of the system. As I understand I will need to study about my life. About the events in the past and about how am I am living today. What was even more interesting, was to learn that I would know about myself also from what I want to achieve in the future. I thought this was going to be easy.

“Most people would have considerable difficulty in answering these questions seriously and accurately; they do not really know what things have decisively influenced their lives in the past, they do not understand the situation they presently live in, nor do they have a clear image of what they want to achieve in the future.”

So, it would not be as easy as I thought. It seemed to require serious work – reflections about the past, present and future in a systematic way and to draw learning from that about myself.  Do I need to do that?

“In this you will study your negative aspects, and more importantly, you will discover positive qualities you may not have known about, that you should strengthen and develop.”

That was enticing. Learning about myself is not only going to be interesting but also a very important realisation in my journey to becoming better human being.

Further sharing in the next mail.

Parimal Merchant Humanist Volunteer

Continue reading more about Journey to becoming better human being part- 37