Know Thyself

The title of this post is a saying that's some 2500 years old—an inscription from the ancient Greek Temple of Apollo at Delphi.

A thousand years later, Socrates proclaimed that "the unexamined life is not worth living", and so chose death rather than submitting to censorship of his efforts to get Athenians to see the truth about themselves.

It's a problem known to history for a very long time. We tend not to know ourselves very well. Hold a mirror up to someone's shortcomings and you're likely to get an unpleasant if not violent reaction.

It's difficult enough for most of us to see the differences between what we want to be, what we think we are and what we really are. If you drink, it's that much harder. Achieving a state of comfortable self-assurance may be the most important benefit we seek from alcohol. Such delusions tend to lead to unhappiness though. Life usually serves up a gauntlet of unpleasant consequences for anyone not grounded in reality.

As the poet Robert Burns wrote in his poem titled "To a Louse, On Seeing One on a Lady's Bonnet at Church",

And would some Power the Giver give us
To see ourselves as others see us!
It would from many a blunder free us.