Our Strange Problem

Have you ever heard a recording of your own voice and thought, “Do I really sound like that?” Everyone else hears that voice every day. You're the only one who hears it from the inside, which is exactly why you're the one who gets it wrong.

The mind works the same way. When we try to understand ourselves, the thing doing the looking is the very thing being looked at, blind spots and wishes included. There's no outside mirror to check our view against. Saint Augustine felt this when he wrote, “I had become a great question to myself.”

That is exactly why the self-knowledge should start with humility. We are both the explorer and the territory, so whatever we conclude about ourselves should stay a little open. The moment we're sure we've figured ourselves out is usually the moment we've stopped looking, learning and evolving.