This is part 1 of a series of posts on Self-Knowledge in a time of Pandemic. Part 2 is available here.
Covid-19 is everywhere, Governments are enforcing lock-downs (or Shelter-in-Place depending on where you live) to contain the spread of the virus, we all know the story.
But have you ever wondered why so many people have such a hard time staying at home during this Pandemic?
I mean take a look at this guy for example:
So what’s the issue here with not being able to stay at home?
After all some of you might say, quarantine and being forced to stay at home for a long period of time means you are totally disconnected from whatever made up your life before this Pandemic. And this can be a traumatic experience for some people and introduce this resistance.
While this is definitely true, it remains our responsibility to choose our reaction to this event – So how about we look at it in another way?
How about instead of trying to ignore what is happening, we accept and acknowledge this fracture of our lives as it is, we see that for every traumatic experience there is an opportunity for growth, and we seize that opportunity?
You see, the world can push us to change sometimes, but only if we seize the opportunity and build on it. Some people choose to turn inwards and change after a breakup, others after they loose their jobs, or one of their families members. In all these instances, they loose something that represented a big chunk of meaning in their lives, and after watching their representation of the world falling apart, they chose to act on it, learn the lessons they had to learn, and create new deeper meaning in their lives.
Now, the current situation is out of your control: Covid-19 is making you stay home and because of that, the meaning you gave to your life through your previous daily activities is temporarily lost. What do you choose to do? Do you fall into depression, binge watch TV shows and drink your soul to death? Or do you seize this opportunity, face your demons, and choose to grow?
If you’ve made it to this part, that means you are probably interested by the latter option. Great choice!
So “Where do I start with all this facing my demons stuff?” you might ask.
Well I’m glad you asked, because that’s the main topic of this series: Self Knowledge.
Self Knowledge is basically getting to know yourself, what you authentically value in life, what’s most important for you in life and what’s not, what is you, and what is not you.
Why should you care about Self Knowledge?
Well, Self Knowledge is of crucial importance because it’s at the basis of whatever you will become and accomplish in your life. In fact let’s go down the rabbit hole for a second: what you will become and whatever you will accomplish in life is the sum of all the choices you have ever made from your birth. These choices that you make on a daily basis are heavily influenced by what you choose to value, and what you choose to value, well, is at the core of Self Knowledge.
Without a high degree of self knowledge, you would simply be coasting along in life like what many people do. You would be operating on auto-pilot mode, no clear sense of who you are or where you are going, no feeling of control over your life, having opinions that are not truly yours, acting on the basis of some values that are not really yours, you would basically act like a mirror, reflecting your society values and culture. In other words, there would be no YOU.
So how do you affirm your individuality as a person? How do you create a “You” that gets in between your society and the mirror and breaks that reflection?
What are Values?
Your Values are the building blocks behind what’s most important and meaningful to you in life. Think of them as the pieces of Lego that make up every activity or experience that you really care about and enjoy undertaking. It’s these abstract concepts that are at the basis of every choice you make, every day of your life.
Why bother with Values?
- First, because they are at the core of who you are as a person, because it influences all aspects of your identity, your decisions, your actions, and hence whatever you will accomplish in life. Therefore, if you care about the results you will get in life and the person you will become, well you should care about choosing your values.
- Second, because if you somehow managed to delude yourself thinking that you don’t have to go through this laborious process of defining and choosing your own values, you will end up picking up whatever norms and values are prevailing out there in your environment. That’s just as simple as that. There is no 3rd option here where you can ignore all of this and go live on Mars.
It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but you cannot not choose. There is no escape and no opting out of the two choices you have: You either create your own system, or you follow another man’s system.
And trust me, you’d be better off creating your own system. Because when you don’t, you will make decisions that are not really yours, because they are based on values that are not really yours. You will then avoid all responsibilities for the consequences of your decisions, since after all, you think to yourself that it’s not really your decisions. And since as we previously said, your decisions and their consequences make up your entire life, you will then not be assuming responsibility for your entire life! You will not own yourself, what you do and what happens to you in life and you will feel powerless on this planet. To put it another way, you will waste your life and your only chance at truly existing in this world before death takes us all.
It should be pretty clear by now that choosing your values is one of the most important endeavors you can take to start living a meaningful and empowering life. When you choose your values, you stop being a blank slate on which the world prints whatever it wishes, and instead you apply your conscious choice on all this flow of values, of things to care about and things to not care about, filtering out what you are not, and choosing what you are. Simply put, you become an individual.
However, since no one can force you to do anything, the question still remains: Are you keen enough to find out about your values? Are you sick of not being who you are and not fulfilling your inner potentialities?
Have you decided to see the silver lining in this Pandemic and use it as an opportunity to get to know who you are, and choose who you will become?
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