The Key Of Knowledge

We all have a need to be seen and heard. Acknowledgment is vital. We seek inclusion and the approval of others. We want to be part of the whole.

But the price of recognition is exposure and, for many, that is too high a price to pay.

The answer is to develop a persona that has two sides… the public and the private. We keep things hidden. We can be anyone or anything we want if our acting skills are good enough. What other people see is not necessarily the person we are.

Where that comes unstuck is when we have to face ourselves. While it’s possible to fool all of the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time it’s not possible to fool ourselves. We are who we are and there is no place to hide from ourselves. Wherever we go, we are there.

The most challenging thing in life is self-acknowledgement because that is not possible without self-assessment.

Self-assessment, however, can descend into self-criticism which, in turn, becomes self-hatred. It’s altogether too easy to make an enemy of the person we are.

So many people do not like themselves because they have never taken the time or effort to get to know themselves. More often than not it’s because they fear what it is that they may discover.

And we can become so caught up in creating the persona we imagine other people want to see that we can lose a sense of our true self.

It’s essential to come to terms with the fact that every individual is absolutely unique. What we have been makes us what we are and what we are makes us what it is we will become. No two pathways are the same. No two stories are the same. No two individuals are the same.

Time spent looking inside our own hearts and heads is not time wasted.

Knowing ourselves is key to everything.