Know Yourself

Socrates once said, “For life to be meaningful, human beings must know themselves. They must examine their lives because only the examined life is worth living.” Do you believe in this? If so, how do you know yourself? How well do you know yourself?

I am always reminded that the life we have now is a precious gift from God and it is up to us if we are going to give ourselves the gift of living well. Because of this thought, I think of many ways on how to make my life be what I wanted. I only started with knowing myself – my nature, my limitations, my strengths, and my weaknesses. I have to understand very well that as a human being, I have to experience sufferings in terms of pain, sickness, old age, and death. I have to bear in mind that I cannot do everything I want to not just because I do not know how but I just shouldn’t because it is not what is right and I might step on other people’s rights. I have limitations and I have to admit that. I should be glad of my strengths because those will help me survive in the battle we call life. I must be very careful with my weaknesses. Yes! Those are something I get frustrated and disappointed of but it will not just end up there if I do something about it. I should always remember that the weaknesses I have can still be my strengths if slowly, I overcome it. We may have our limits but sometimes, it is not wrong to go beyond our comfort zones with a purely good intention of honing ourselves for as long as no one gets stepped on as we do the best we can in all things we wish we could have made and done.

I’m happy. I get to experience what are those things that make life what it really is. For twenty three years (and counting) of beautiful existence, I believe that I have known myself that much that I do not allow people to rule my life but just give them a nice turn to give me their wonderful pieces of advice and decide on my own whether I’ll live with it or leave it just the way it is. This is my life. God gave me the highest faculty of the mind and the freewill on how to give meaning to it with the people who mean so much to me; however, I also believe that as I get along the way, I will know myself even more and I’ll be even happier when that day comes.

Start knowing yourself then so you can have that life worth living.