Know Thyself

To know yourself is to truly understand the nature of yourself.  That is, you have to be aware of your weaknesses and strengths.  Limits of stress, irritations, infatuations, talents are all part of the knowledge of yourself.  I could list many other components that make up the nature of a person, but I believe that the traits could be summed as the aspects of a person that explain his or her actions.  If you can understand why you act the way you do, then you can work to utilize or change that attribute.  Knowledge is power, even self-knowledge.  This understanding of yourself will then allow you to understand others.  We all have flaws and we all have great capabilities.  Being aware of your flaws allows you to more easily forgive others when they make mistake.  Being aware of your own talents should make you understand that others will be better at certain things than you.  So in general, understanding yourself gives you a perspective.  Without this perspective, we cannot form true friendships with one another. 

My worst quality has to be my lack of impulse control.  The idea of delaying pleasure is just so unappealing and I rarely listen to the little voice that tells me to do so.  This problem has been the greatest source of distress in my life.  Don’t get me wrong, I get good grades to feed my own pride, but I’m also trying very hard to avoid the wrath of my parents.  Each time I choose pleasure over studying for the test I receive a good half of hour of lecturing and/or yelling.  This sounds trivial, but it’s amazingly distressful.  Outside of the context of school, I have a tendency voice exactly what I think, another manifestation of my lack of impulse control.  So, I come off emotional and way too blunt.  I am emotional and blunt, but I should really try to hide those two qualities a little more if I don’t want to offend people. 

My best quality must be my ability to empathize with people.  I’m not saying that I always understand others or that I never throw around a nasty insult.  I only mean that I can feel the pain someone experiences in their worst moments.  Every now and then people get off the bus that is life and take a pit stop at the wrong place.  I have been there and I’ve stayed there for a while.  I know what it’s like to feel completely alone or just hurt.  So if I see that in someone else, I can guarantee that I’m the first person to take his or her side.  It doesn’t matter if the person deserves the pain or not.  In that moment, he or she truly needs a friend.  I can always be that friend.  Sometimes, unfortunately, my friendship isn’t always welcomed and I really should learn to back off and give that person some space.  But I can’t.  Our friends are what keep us grounded to this world.  If that person can just realize that I care, then I’m satisfied.  I cannot imagine ever allowing someone to feel alone.  I feel and am so strong now, so it almost seems like a duty to give back some of my strength to the world. 

I’m actually not finding it all that difficult to think or write about this, but I think it must be because I’ve done so much self-reflection in the past.  One thing I remember being particularly difficult was admitting my flaws.  If I say it out loud or write it down, all of a sudden my flaws are completely real.  Being aware of my flaws hurt because I all I saw was all that was wrong with me.  Then, if I try to think about my strengths, my mind keeps zeroing back in on my flaws.  Next thing I know, I’m wallowing in self-pity.  However, as soon as I got past that stage I was able to think about myself a little more objectively.  That’s when I got the determination to change what I didn’t like about myself, and use my strengths to gain confidence.  My self-reflection experience has been really healthy and I really have no objections to thinking about myself.  The experience has also made me really grateful for my family.  I can definitely see how parts of my character have been shaped by the fact that I have great parents.