Know Thyself: The Importance of Knowing Who You Are

You probably spend most of your time with yourself – I mean, it’s hard to escape you, isn’t it? You can’t exactly leave yourself behind. You tag along when you’re with your friends, when you’re eating, and when you’re relaxing after dinner. You are even there when you sleep. So you probably know yourself pretty well. Right?

What is your favorite color? Your favorite song? Your favorite movie?

These simple questions give you a small glimpse of who you are. Sometimes they can be relatively easy to answer and sometimes they are hard. You might have a favorite happy song and a favorite sad song. Your likes and dislikes might change according to your mood. That’s because you are a complex individual. It isn’t easy figuring out who you are.

People have been trying to figure out who they are for thousands of years. The pursuit of knowledge, referred to as philosophy, can be described as an attempt to understand ourselves. Socrates said over two thousand years ago, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” He should know since he is commonly considered the father of Western philosophy.

Socrates believed that the key to a happy existence is knowing who you are. Once you understand who you are, then you can discover your likes and dislikes, what you should do for a living, who you want to spend time with, and all sorts of day-to-day decisions we usually have to simply guess at. Socrates knew the most important answers lie inside us.

So before you go too far in life without a firm understanding of who you are, spend some time in self-reflection. Set goals for things you think are important to you and then try to achieve them. You will either find that you were right, or that those goals really weren’t you. Keep a journal and chronicle your daily wants, fears, feelings, and thoughts. Soon you will begin to puzzle together the complex mystery of you.