Know thyself before it's too late

I’ve encountered many, many people who do not know what it means to understand themselves. They believe that if they have a feeling as a reaction to something that happens, or as companion to a thought or a belief, that feeling is “who they are” and has no deeper cause or reason. The feeling says what it is and all that it is.

 

This error is understandable by the nature of feeling. It seems like identity. But if we cry at a happy moment, or rage at a tangled computer cord or a slow driver, or get anxious if our fourth-grader brings home a “C,” we should wonder who we really are.

 

Of course, people also believe that their assumptions and convictions, as well as their feelings, are who they are. They are often disabused of that notion in therapy where mantras like “I love my mother to death” and “my parents did their best” and “I’m never good enough” evaporate in a bleak epiphany.

 

It is rare for a parent to say to herself: Why do I want to punish my child? What is this feeling inside me that wants to deprive or hurt him? It is rare for an adult to ask himself: Why do I enjoy being sarcastic, even when I can see that it hurts someone’s feelings? It is rare for a person who says “I don’t trust people” to ask himself: What is going on inside me that makes me think that most people are untrustworthy? It is not quite so rare, but still rare for “people-pleasers” to wonder if they really care about the people they serve, if there may be something self-serving and self-preserving behind their altruism.

 

These and countless other feelings should be explored. They may not be what they seem.

 

Right now I am most concerned about all the people, millions of them, who feel good when they think about the psychologically disturbed and morally malevolent Trump. It is rare to nonexistent that any of them wonder what makes them glad about violence; why their intelligent discernment is not embarrassed by Trump’s fatuous ignorance; why a hating person makes them feel redeemed. If they could look inward, they would find the life they had to bury in their adolescent years if not earlier: injustice and unhelped loneliness and a need for some kind of revenge. This would still be boiling and churning deep below, a turbulence that they cannot see through. Were it to subside, by the gifts of care and self-compassion, their vision would be cleared and they would see a sick man whose medicine is hate and delusion.