While taking unhurried strokes in the pool, I started asking myself, “Who are you, Brian McNaught?”
Being the sum of all my life experiences, plus the influence of my DNA, I think back to my earliest moments of interaction with others. I was a little boy, born in the shadow of my infant brother’s tragic death. Did that influence my empathy or was I born with it?
I know how others see me, but is their image real? When you have a public persona, it’s challenging to separate how you’re thought of, from the true you. Are they the same? I want to accurately, intimately know myself before I lose the opportunity to do so.
And so, I swam in a gentle crawl with full focus on who I imagined myself to be. I began with the positives, which happen to be a good match for how others experience me, and then I focussed on what about me I’d like to change before my last breath.
Since I was little, I’ve experienced myself as kindhearted, empathetic, thoughtful, honest, and generous, but more recently I’m aware of myself also being judgmental, easily hurt by unfair treatment, controlling, hard on myself, forgiving but not forgetting, competitive, and the need to have things perfect for others, if not for myself.
As I’ve grown older, I’ve become more aware of my shortcomings. My guess is that the people with whom I’m close are also aware of my weaknesses but they love me perhaps because of my ability to make them laugh.
Well aware that I’ll probably have both my positive and negative qualities when I die, I nevertheless hope to lessen the impact of negative thinking on my daily life. The good news is that I’m making progress. I’ve learned to create much better boundaries for myself, and to rein in judgments. I’m more skilled at letting them pass.
There is much more that I can learn about myself, but I’m happy to have had the strength to acknowledge and understand my weaknesses and to work on them. If I died tomorrow, I’d do so feeling that I did my best, and that I was an overall good person. And I’d be very grateful for those slow swims and walks that gave me the opportunity to better “know thyself.”
Besides knowing thyself, true wisdom also results from embracing your full self with loving kindness and forgiveness.
“Knowing others is intelligence. Knowing yourself is true wisdom.” Tao te Ching No. 33
