Know Thy Self

I have little need for self-analysis as I do so much of it. However, there are parts of my Self that are difficult to get to. Sometimes I need to understand those parts so they can be put in the analysis machine. The best way I've found is to ask questions and see what my answers are. The best are ones that present a temporal juxtaposition of my life events and various versions of my Self. It doesn't really tell me much about how I used to be, but it can tell me about how I view myself as having been and it gets at what those events are about to me, now.

Example: Would the Stephen who was in Moldova do the highest bungy in world? No. He was not impulsive. He was crippled by his rationality and much too bound to the opinions of adults. Mom's unease would have stopped him cold. Yes, he did board a bus with people he hardly knew and traveled half-way across Moldova to visit a castle. But only because Mom was okay with it and it was the idea of an adult. Yes, he did ride a bus through Moldova all the way to the end of the bus line. But only because he thought the route was circular. His terror levels soared when he found that he had to get off the bus and didn't know enough Romanian to understand his situation or find a way out. He was resourceful enough to walk until he found something familiar... but he got lucky. He knew it. True, he stared down the treat of serious bodily harm during the robbery. But he had no choice. It was a real growth of his Self. He could not knowingly inflict such terror on his Self.

The fact that he was 13 is not relevant. The Self knows no age, only experience. And there is no way to gauge the experience level of a Self. I see my Self has having gone through mile stones that define the various versions it has passed through. Of course there are not discrete differences between one and another. In the way that I measure them, South Africa has put me into my 7th revision.

I can feel some of it calcifying, while other parts are still being broken down. But I'm starting to see trends. The Self-Help concept is a myth. One cannot just decide to be different. However, by noticing where the hard and soft spots are, one can mold. Try to change a solid aspect of your Self and you're in for a long struggle. Aim for a soft spot and there's a lot of potential.

Trying to change a hard spot? You need a big event to hammer it. Some tenderizer is in order. And it will not be pleasant. That's what makes it hard to change them. We do not want to hurt ourselves. Self-inflicted pain is possible only when it is unwitting or when it's masked as something other than pain. The tender spots are easy because we are causing pain during a healing. It is pain, but it's also investigation of a wound.

Now, to my point: Analyzing my Self is a process of healing. In the past I've had a fairly rough touch and I would poke at anything that hurt and hurt anything that didn't. I've discovered, over the last 11 years, how to restrict the prodding to places that I'm interested in healing. The wound metaphor is apropo because newly healed wounds can break open again and all healing takes time.

However, the me of yesterday lives on inside the me of today. It still has some good ideas about right action at cusp. Nothing is all bad. Nothing.