Who Am I?

In a recent discussion someone asked why should we bother over things such as trying to know ourselves better?  In turn he was asked, what is more important in life than attaining self-knowledge, knowing oneself?  I could not agree more.  

Yes, there are many things in life to devote oneself to, such as getting an education, having a career and earning a decent salary, raising a family and hopefully being a person of some use to society.  As a matter of fact, I’m sure for a lot of people simply trying to get by in a highly competitive and challenging world, is already a difficult enough task they have to face in their lives without having to ask a question whose answer is as elusive as the question itself.
But the question must be asked.  ‘Who am I’ and ‘Why am I in this world?’  Questions whose answers would lead one to the quest of finding one self and achieving self-knowledge.  Without pausing to ask these fundamental questions about our existence, life could only be shallow, lived on the superficial level, like taking part in a school play and yet not knowing what role you have to play.  

Worse.  You don’t even realise you’re in a play, thinking that the role is your true self.  That the play on the stage is your life.  You have no idea who you really are, let alone who the author of the drama is.  Stay on the stage long enough, sooner or later you will feel that there is something incomplete about your character, something odd and aimless, something missing.  

Letting Go

One of the hardest things in life that we must do is to say goodbye and to let go, whether to people, situation or even things.  When we’re happy, the happiness is often tinged with sadness because we know that the moment will not last, and already we’re thinking of how much we will regret losing that feeling.

When I was a child I had a particularly sensitive nature when it came to the idea of loss, something that may be older folk would be more familiar with as they are a lot more prone to pangs of nostalgia than younger people.  For instance, I remember vividly when I was around seven or eight years old, my mother reprinted some old photos that I had not seen before to stick in a photo album.  Some had photos of me as a toddler.

Instead of being amused by the baby pictures, I was filled with an enormous sense of sadness so much so I actually shed tears copiously.  The reason was, I could not recollect any of the moments captured in the photos and I was filled with regret there was a part of my life that I lost forever, even as I did not have any memory of it.  Once upon a time, I was a little child, and now that child was gone.  I was already a big girl.

An Examined Life

I am reading the speech made by Socrates when he was tried by the Athenians with charges of ‘corrupting the youths’ and for which he was condemned to death by drinking the poison hemlock and I find it amazing how words spoken over two thousand millennia ago could still ring true today.  Here was a man put to death because he was a ‘gadfly’ to the state, an affront to the ‘polite’ society who were suspicious of teachings considered contrary to the norm and who was seen as a threat to mores and values of the day.

And what were those values?  Socrates was a philosopher whose life was dedicated to asking question and challenging assumptions people took for granted.  He was accused of godlessness and yet he was a great believer in the spirits and divine beings.  He dedicated his life to the pursuit of knowledge and the improvement of the self and for this the young followed him as a man of wisdom and a teacher who taught them about the need to pursue a life of virtue.

‘Men of Athens, I honour and love you; but I shall obey God rather than you, and while I have life and strength I shall never cease from the practice and teaching of philosophy, exhorting anyone whom I meet after my manner, and convincing him, saying: O my friend, why do you who are a citizen of the great and mighty and wise city of Athens , care so much about laying up the greatest amount of money and honour and reputation, and so little about wisdom and truth and the greatest improvement of the soul, which you never regard or heed at all? Are you not ashamed of this? And if the person with whom I am arguing says: Yes, but I do care; I do not depart or let him go at once; I interrogate and examine and cross-examine him, and if I think that he has no virtue, but only says that he has, I reproach him with undervaluing the greater, and overvaluing the less.’

The Challenge of Multitasking

I could barely remember the days when life was not all about multitasking.  When one did things one at a time and if you wanted to do a lot of things, then it was a matter of doing things faster, more efficiently or simply finding the time in which to do them.  The form of multitasking in the good old days that I could think of, that is when time seemed to move a lot slower and there were certainly a lot less gadgets in my hand, on my lap and in my handbag, was when I read a book while eating my packet of crisps and sipping my cup of tea, or watching the television while vacuuming the carpet at the same time.

The Meaning of Happiness

Happiness, they say, is a state of mind.   It is not what you have and it is not what you do.  It is how you feel as you are going through the motion of living.  But then, it is not like emotions either, that change when the sun shines or the rain pours, or even for absolutely no reason at all.  Rather it is a constant (like a background noise that ceases to have no sound because one ceases to listen to it) whose presence is noticeable only during its absence.  Indeed, it is often in moments of unhappiness do we realize how happy our lives have been!  In times of loss do we appreciate how much we actually own.

So, how do we achieve a happy state of mind then?  It is not, as we have said, in possessing.  But we do feel elevated in the anticipation of possessing something we’ve always wanted, do we not?  However, this pleasant sense of anticipation normally disappears very soon after we finally possess what we wanted.  So we move on to the next set of desirable object, not to delight in that object itself, but to fulfil that craving, to revel in the pleasure of the chase and the anticipation.  To get intoxicated in the anguish of being denied.

This anguish (the pain of the lover waiting for the beloved) however, must not be confused with happiness.  Though often it does make one feel that much more alive and gives one a sense of purpose.  That one’s life has a meaning, whether it is in accumulation of all sorts of material things, experiencing different situations and forming a variety of relationships.