The World Cup is over. Oh, Argentina... The game was good, though.
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"Know yourself" is a very old, timeless advice.
You were born without knowing who you are or who you would be.
"Know yourself" is usually not done by a prophesy or by an announcing Angel. It is a process in your life.
As you grow up, you gather clues, from your own preference, from things you are "naturally good at", from others like friends, parents, relatives and school teachers, from your culture and circumstances.
One day, you finally "know yourself", who you are in this world (or so you think). You can foresee the future who you would be and can facilitate to realize it by acting the role.
Of course what you "know" about yourself is not immutable. The certainty is only to some extent, until circumstance changes and challenge what you "know" as yourself. Or until you re-invent yourself. What you think you know about yourself can be wrong, unfortunately or fortunately, or changeable.
In drama, a type of "tragedy" is described as a situation in which a person meets his/her own character that would lead to an unfavorable end or demise.
When you "know yourself" as a holder of a character that you do not like, and you foresee the demise you would meet by being yourself, what would you do? Will you fight it? Will you accept it? Will you deny it and let it be? It is a part of your Drama.
Knowing self and the associated drama happen all the time in anyone's life. There is no drama-free life, especially in the former half.
Most of the time, woe comes when he finds out he is not a hero in a type of art/act/event he loves or favors, like Salieri in Amadeus. "I love music composition but I suck compared with Mozart. I'll kill him to get back at the God who made this unfairness".
In much rarer cases, you find yourself in a big story with an impossible mission, like Frodo and Sam in the Lord of the Rings.
(Did you know Frodo ultimately failed in his mission in a strict sense? It was Gollum who completed the mission. Nice twist, Tolkien).
You may not always aware that you are in a story of your life. But you are.
On the other hand, it really hurts when you are aware of it and you think your story sucks.
In fact, what you can do really good is limited in life. So life is inherently tragic. Life may be like curving a sculpture. You keep curving out your possibilities until something emerges (or not. ouch). Each of the curving can hurt. The pain may be less if the curving is made in the name of choice and focus.
"Know yourself" may not be all good. It can hurt. But the pain is also a shared part of the process of life. If we all have to deal with the pain, how about be graceful at dealing with it?
This entry is an idle thought stemming from the previous entry on 7/4/2014.
