Certainly among the most well known of the Delphic maxims of Greek philosophical origins[1] is the command to “know thyself” and in such understand one’s own limitations and role in the world.
It is not particularly surprising then that I might choose to devote a substantial part of this writing project to the idea of personal understanding and in particular getting our own heads around personal honesty. There are, after all, a great many myths we build up around our own narratives, lies we tell ourselves about ourselves, that are just as like to be limitations we unnecessarily tangle into our heads that quickly become powerful barriers to even the simplest acts of creativity.
To know thyself is to accept the worst of ourselves as well as the best.
To know thyself is to face the demon as well as entertaining the muse.
And to deny that already before me a million books and blogs and podcasts have already spent time and ink and data on these topics would be a fools errand.
Do I have something unique to contribute, or am I even in that fooling myself about my own role in this conversation?
I might suggest that this is but the first myth I can tear down: we all have perspectives that may retread common ground but are seen through a set of eyes, heard through a pair of ears, sensed by our personal neurons and it is just as important to know ourselves through this effort as to simply absorb the perceptions of others. As important as the basics of life to a creative soul.
Under the category of Food & Shelter, I’lll be writing more on this topic as the months wear on.
Terms FROm this POSt
- blog
- I admit, I am pretty old. And I started posting formatted words and photos online before the word blog had even entered the common lexicon. Most people work in the medium of social platforms these days, but being both a product of my time and a stickler for content ownership and control, I still lean into and promote the idea that a personal content managed general purpose website is the beating heart of the internet I once knew and loved. I use blogging software, but I don’t think of these sites like blogs, more like living documents that happen to look an awful lot like blogs.
