Motivation
This week, I've been trying to understand the meaning behind knowing oneself. What does that even mean? Throughout my life, I've seen monks and famous people preach that one must medidate and think. One must always have some time reserved for thinking.
Here's what I've come to understand from my short while of trying to understand this question - and evaluating how far I've truly come to understand myself. First, as an anime fan I'd like to show off a quote by one of my favorite characters from Naruto: Itachi.
"If you want to know who you are, you have to look at your real self and acknowledge what you see".
My findings
Now what I'd like to talk about is that this is a very simple question - who am I?
I've come to a list of questions that come into my mind and I'd like to share them here.
- Why/When/How does one get angry?
- Why/When/How does one get upset?
- Why does one do things they do? (What are the motivtions behind your actions)
and so on. In reality though, I think the simplest question to ask oneself is:
Why do you act the way you do
Through this question, one can self reflect any circumstance that they come into life.
Why should we think about this anyways?
I believe that knowing oneself is so crucially important to help you make decisions in life. Whether it is to purchase that really expensive car or to propose to your partner. These decisions can be simplified once you know yourself. Happiness can be achieved only by knowing oneself. If you don't understand what makes you happy, how could you ever be happy? - You'd simply be recieving bits and pieces of happiness given by other people that scratch your happiness spot.
Finally, my last argument of why we should think about this is so that we can see how our values and beliefs fit in this vast world. Knowing oneself allows us to get a birds eye view of our position in this world and potentially help us realize what we need to improve on and what we are doing great at.
And upon my own (albeit limited) self reflection - I just realize that there's a lot I can improve on. And of-course, here's a photo!
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A beautiful sunset by 白沙屯 in Taiwan
- taken from the freeway |
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