Can we ever truly know ourselves? - A train of thought

Hello lovely Positivity & Gratitude Community! I hope all of you have been doing amazing. Lately, I have been marvelling over the thought of whether it is possible to ever truly know oneself. I am someone who takes pride in being self-reliant because “I know myself best, only I will get myself through it.” But as the complexity of life and the subtleties of human relationships have unfolded in my life, I think I am doing quite well at understanding how it might not be possible to completely know ourselves - and why we don’t even have to, how it is okay to know just a little. Today, I will be sharing some things I read, I hope it feels like an interesting reading for all of you! I hope we can all have a great soulful discussion on this.

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“Self-knowledge is only from moment to moment, and therefore there is a creative happiness from moment to moment.”

- Jiddu Krishnamurti

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Many philosophers like Descartes believed that we do know ourselves - of course, we know what we need to do, what we would like, what we would benefit from, why we do some things - that counts as self-knowledge, right? But Sigmund Freud had a different perspective on this, he realized that it wasn’t this simple to know oneself. A lot of our desires, true intentions and beliefs are hidden from us, repressed in small boxes inside our mind which isn’t easy to uncover on our own. And there is a lot of evidence, a lot of personal observation to support this claim that we might not know ourselves as well as we think we do.

Take yourself for an example, reflect back over a time you did not understand why you did a certain thing - you had to self-introspect, spend some time, speculate on why you did what you did - the possibilities, the explanations, the patterns, so many things to consider. Even then, such reflections can be limited because of the limited experience that we’ve had so far. Do you think you’d react the same way in a situation from the past having the understanding of today? I believe it is not possible. Albert Camus, a French philosopher said, “To know oneself, one should assert oneself. Psychology is action, not thinking about oneself. We continue to shape our personality all our life.” Doesn’t that make our speculation of knowing who we are incomplete or at least something that is ever-changing? It’s human nature to adapt, change and evolve as they go through life - to assert their survival, to keep their species from extinction.

If we are always changing, what is the point to even go on the quest of trying to know ourselves? Is there ever a definite answer?

What I think is, knowing yourself doesn’t mean knowing everything that is there about you at any given moment. I think it is about accepting how so much of it would change with time but still being willing to understand it as it changes, to understand yourself and how you are changing with your reactions. Being aware of what has changed, what remains the same and how it can be better helps a lot and might be the closest thing that can help us know why we do what we do.

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿

Question 1. What are your thoughts on self-knowledge?

Question 2. What is something about you that you know for sure to be true, something that might not have changed so much over the years?

Resources: https://www.philosophytalk.org/blog/limits-self-knowledge#:~:text=There's%20a%20long%20tradition%20in,going%20on%20in%20our%20minds.