On Finding Out The Worst Of You
Discovering yourself doesn’t mean that you’ll find good things. On the opposite, you will face exactly what you’ve been running from. You will see in yourself what you’ve been avoiding to see, and wish you were blind to that. But no, you can’t unsee something once you see it, you can’t unknow something you already knew.
That’s why people refuse to know the truth that might hurts, because they know they’ll always know it, that they can’t hide in the dark and use ignorance as an excuse anymore. And that knowledge requires work, for knowing without acting doubles the pain. Acting upon knowledge consumes energy, irreversible energy, which means abondaning the old, comfortable state they were in it.
Discovering unpleasant things in yourself doesn’t mean you’re doomed to them. It doesn’t mean you’re destined to be that way for the rest of your life. For as I said, your discovery demands work.
On the other side, your awareness of your dark side makes you more understanding and more acceptable to behaviors and actions coming from you. Maybe with a little bit of training, you’ll be able to identify patterns and spot what’s about to get wrong.
That’s what I realized the past weeks.
I used to think that what people mean by discovering themselves is finding a treasure hidden inside… That they’ll find a new potential they didn’t knew about before and now they can harness it to their favor. I thought that it’s all bright and shiny, until I started my own journey.
Sure, I found some good things inside, but it wasn’t all gold. Most of what I found was unsettling. It was a mess. I was fooled by self-improvement industry. Let the giant within you go out! Or whatever that guy says. I’m not blaming them though; it was me who had a distorted understanding of the concept.
The good thing is, I haven’t ignored it. I knew I’m full of mistakes and defaults. My job was to fix such things when I discover them, not judge them.
And that’s what I learned, something that you can also take; to not fear your faults but to fear not learning from them. We try to get rid of our bad experiences as we hold to the good ones, but the truth is, they’re all part of us, they shape who we are, and our acts towards them shapes what kind of a person we will be.
