Do you know yourself?

“I can never read all the books I want; I can never be all the people I want and live all the lives I want. I can never train myself in all the skills I want. And why do I want? I want to live and feel all the shades, tones and variations of mental and physical experience possible in life. And I am horribly limited.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

 

That's all I have to say. Know why? every time there is a semblance of 'knowing myself
' I somehow seem to do surprise myself. I've no idea how. 

 

For everything I said I will not do, I did.

For everything I thought was weird, became me.

For everything I was shocked of, felt everyday

Everything I said I won't survive, I survived.

For every time I said, may be I won't be able to do it. I did it.

For every this is damn it, it got difficult.

Every fight I said I won't get into, I was involved

For every this is not my damn problem, I made it mine. 

The point of my post is simple, I've a very rigid idea of exactly who I am and what I stand for 'today'.

Do you know yourself is a very daunting question to ask anyone who feels they've lived life in a very sheltered comfortable way. But through the years, through experiences of my own and from experiences of my friends I've formed some very strong belief systems and they are never going change. For instance, even 40 years from now, I will never question why I support gay marriage, my mind is made up and it wont change because there are certain things that fall directly in the wrong and right category and nothing will change my mind about it. 

 

I don't think you can know yourself. You can merely explore yourself. For the longest time I thought I was an extrovert. I mean, I spoke to people, I was good on stage, I wasn't even remotely worried about people. But the more I asked myself certain questions, I realised that's not who an extrovert is and more importantly, I'm not one. I'm the 'makes an effort to socialise' person.  So the idea of 'ourself' is based around what others tell us, it is only unbiased introspection and ruthless reality checks that put our 'understanding' of ourselves to the test. 

For all those times I said peer pressure doesn't get to me, it did. Every time I said 'I am not judgmental'  I realised that I have been. I merely corrected my mistake but I realise that if you can claim to know yourself, there is no scope to grow. I have an idea of the kind of person I want to become. I work hard towards that. When I'm old and wrinkly, I'll probably say if I've become the person I thought I was.

I want to be transparent, I want to uncomplicate, I don't want to be judgmental, I want to make life better for me and anyone I meet (This is never getting done), I want to be the kind of person that people don't feel the need to hide from (Hello! Cool Aunt points), I want to be remembered for not being an asshole who made life bad. It's really just that