self-discovery

Simone Weil said, “Man only escapes from the laws of this world in lightning flashes. Instants when everything stands still, instants of contemplation, of pure intuition, of mental void, of acceptance of the moral void. It is through such instants that he is capable of the supernatural.” I don’t yet know about the word only, but I think there is a

If you want to decipher who you are, it’s good to begin with the question of what stories have been told about you. Do this not because they are true but because they will help you locate the mirages and their origins. They will help you rend mask from flesh. They may also help you grab hold of something real.

Have you ever told a lie and then forgot it was a lie? When you tell a story for long enough, you begin to believe it. We adorn ourselves with any number of distractions from self.

Don’t forget this: Nothing is truly ever ordinary. I’m telling you, Protect the truest things about you and it will become easier to hear the truth everyplace else.

thoughts and ways were never anything like mine? But each year I know love and belonging—a love that doesn’t require sacrifice at the altar of acceptance—I become more of who I already am. I am liberated into what Merton calls my “true self.” I believe this is my deepest calling.

For this reason, the process of knowing the self should be relentless. It will always be worth asking what is really true of us, for each day we live, we do so with deeper longings for acceptance, and the risk of alienation can cause us to dissociate from the truth of ourselves.

Any love we receive while wearing the mask only affirms the belief that unmasked, we are indeed unlovable. Our shame is not resolved. It expands. Any affirmation we receive as mirages only keeps our true selves lurking in empty corridors, longing for touch. Illusions of self do not merely make for lonely souls; they make for hated ones.

From horoscopes and the Enneagram to the social archetypes of the high school cafeteria, we are desperate for ways to make sense of who we are in relation to the world. It’s troubling that the answer would not be immediately clear to us. But there are parts of us we’ve managed to hide even from ourselves.

Ask me what I want to be, but not before you ask me who I want to be. Ask me who I want to be, but not before you ask me the more searing question of who I am.