Once I heard someone say that life is like a book and you are the author. I don't remember where I read this; perhaps it was on the back of a Dove chocolate wrapper or in some young adult fiction novel which are chalked full of these pithy cliches. Nevertheless, as a middle school student, I found this idea liberating. I realized that I had the freedom and responsiblity to 'write' my own life, just as if it were a book. But the daunting responsiblity of filling the pages of my life with interesting narratives left me feeling scared. What if my story wasn't a story I wanted to read or I was disappointed with the ending? (Who knew a 6th grader was capable of basic existential thoughts? haha!) So, I decided that I would start writing everything that happened to me down in a journal. By doing this, I would be able to analysize my life on paper and determine whether or not I was satisfied, and if I wasn't I would change it. Plus, being the sentimental person that I am, I wanted to hopefully share these stories with my children someday. Life was so important, I didn't want to forget a single moment. So I began to keep a personal archive where I wrote down everything I did every single day. Plus it was a way for me to express my inner most thoughts and feelings about cute boys, my critique on the latest Lizzie McGuire episode, and my angst with the popular kids. It was some pretty compelling work, complete with heart-dotted-I's and doodles of my dog Henry.
Of course life got in the way, as they say, and I pushed my journals to the side for basketball practice and spending time with friends. I forgot about them. But a few weeks ago as I was doing some cleaning around the house, I uncovered a few boxes of my middle school journals and notes from friends. I blew off the dust and sat for hours reading, remembering, and reminiscing on those forgotten days. I was very amused, as I'm sure most of you would be by looking back at middle school and your search for self identity. I forgot about that 6th grade version of myself, but am glad I uncovered her again because she will always be a part of who I am now.
With this blog, I am attempting to start journaling again, but with much different motives. Now, I must fore- warn you that I'm no writer, so this may not be the most beautifully written, grammatically correct, or profound thing you've ever read, and my lack of literary capability may even be painful at times, but the puropse of this journal is not to show off my creative genius; it is to be an instrument in my project for self discovery. And I promise, well for the most part, that I won't mention anything about cute boys or Lizzie McGuire in this blog (unless it adds to my objectives for this journal, which they very well may. you can never predict such things.)
Self discovery is a hard term to define. It can mean different things to different people. But maybe that's why its called self-discovery; by personally defining something, a person discovers something about themself. I still don't know how I define self discovery. Obviously I think it means to know yourself, but maybe its also being able to be vulnerable to yourself and not being afraid of your deepest, darkest places.
I feel like I have a pretty good idea of who I am, but I'm not satisfied with this. With anything in life, there is always more to learn. I think the first step in this is, atleast on my own personal journey toward self discovery, is finding some kind of consistency in my thoughts and actions. By finding consistency, I can begin to see the core of who I really am and why I think and behave the way I do. I'm not satisfied with simply being, and as Socrates so famously said, "An unexamined life is not worth living." But, as I've discovered, it is really difficult to find consistency. Michel de Montaigne also wrestles with his consistencies, or lack thereof, in his essay "Of the Inconsistency of Our Actions." Montaigne voices my thoughts (in much better writing and clarity) when he says:
If I speak variously of myself, it is because I consider myself variously; all the contrarieties are there to be found in one corner or another; after one fashion or another: bashful, insolent; chaste, lustful; prating, silent; laborious, delicate; ingenious, heavy; melancholic, pleasant; lying, true; knowing, ignorant; liberal, covetous, and prodigal: I find all this in myself, more or less, according as I turn myself about; and whoever will sift himself to the bottom, will find in himself, and even in his own judgment, this volubility and discordance. I have nothing to say of myself entirely, simply, and solidly without mixture and confusion.
I promise that I'm not bipolar (haha) and I'm actually very steadfast and rooted in my values and beliefs. But, at the same time, it would be nearly impossible for me to sit here and type out in words who I am. Could you do it? I'm sure many of you could relate. Every moment, I'm continually changing the way I think about myself, just like Montaigne in his essay. One moment I feel intellegent, the next I feel insuperior. At one moment I'm pleased, and the next I'm disappointed. But, contrary to much scholarly belief, I think it is possible to truely know oneself and to find ones consistencies. There are two ways to find your consistencies: 1) learn to articulate your feelings into words and 2) to look at your actions and how they align, or don't align; and if they are consisent, or inconsistent with your personal values and thoughts.
If you were to dissect my mind, you would be amid a chaotic mixture of confusion (as Montaigne suggests) and entangled in raw ideas and thoughts that don't really make sense to anyone else but myself. This is one of my problems; I have all sorts of cool ideas and opinions about things, but they are in their most simple, raw state. They have yet to be refined or articulated into comprehensible pieces of sharable or replicable information. So most of my ideas are more of a feeling. As suggested in the movie Inception (a very authoritative source, I know), the simplest type of an idea translates into a feeling. This is because you cannot express what you are thinking, so you just FEEL it. Thinking about that idea makes you feel a certain way. This is when you start acting without rational thought. So, I think that by creating a blog, I will teach myself to mold these raw ideas into real, tangible ideas. I want to practice the disciple of articulating my ideas into words as a step to self discovery. As I mentioned earlier, I already have a pretty good idea about who I am, but I want to continue in my quest of self discovery. Getting to know oneself is something one should never give up on, even if you think you know yourself. I don't plan on complacency. I don't plan on staying the same size my whole life. Do you? I want to grow and learn and exceed what I think I already know about myself because I know that is possible. The sky is not the limit (continuing with pithy cliches). Is there a limit for human capacity? I don't think so. That's why God gave us free will.
So the first step is articulating my thoughts. The next step is seeing the consistencies or inconsistencies of my thoughts, which inevitably lead to my actions, and thus guide me to self discovery. One of my favorite Montaigne quotes says, "One gallant action, therefore, ought not to conclude a man valiant; if a man were brave indeed, he would be always so, and upon all occasions." By writing out my thoughts (and pondering my actions), hopefully I will begin to see the pattern by which I live my life. The real me will be exposed.
I feel that expressing who you really are in those tangible ideas I was talking about earlier is a problem for a lot of people. As Virginia Woolf articulates in "A Sketch of the Past," most autobiographies or memoirs prove this. She says, "The reason is that it is so difficult to describe any human being. So they say: 'This is what happened'; but they do not say what that person was like to whom it happened." Although I do believe that a person's outward actions reveal a person's inner character, you can't really, really know a person without knowing their motives for those actions, or their inner character. This journal will help me to articulate my inner character for myself.
I realize this is an ambitious project. Besides learning how to put my thoughts in some sort of form that actually makes sense (things seem to make more sense in my head haha), exposing my inner-most thoughts is exposing myself to the world. It makes me vulnerable, and frankly I don't like that. This already shows me something about myself; that I don't like being vulnerable. But, that is something I must work on if I want to really know myself. I must allow myself to be vulnerable to myself.
Well, now I must go back to my homework. (I'm reading the Tain which is an Irish epic- definitely recommend it if you like blood, action, and 'romance' or atleast thats what they called romance in their day.) I'm sure you are all very sad that I'm done rambling on for now. But don't worry I'll be back.
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