Self-Knowledge: The Most Difficult Kind

The notion that we create our own reality - that's pretty crazy stuff. To some people, it's patently false. It doesn't matter how much I WISH certain things, the reality is what it is.

Another way of putting this notion is that one's exterior is an expression of one's interior. This way of putting it makes the notion more intelligible and credible to me, especially when I consider one specific aspect of my exterior: my friends. They are an expression, to some degree, of who I am and how I think. I didn't create them, of course. But I did choose them, directly or indirectly: where I choose to spend my time, how I spend my money, the level of education and income, the books I read, the neighborhood I live in. These all are involved in the mystery of how I make friends.

So I'm thinking about this, as I end another day in San Diego. Who are my friends? And what do they tell me about myself? A good friend of mine has the moniker The Mirror (though not a moniker I made up). I've asked for her feedback, for this very reason. Not always a pleasant experience, either. But I'm thinking less about what friends tell me, with words, and more about what they tell me just by virtue of being my friends.

E.F. Schumacher wrote a little book called Advice for the Perplexed. He distinguishes four fields of knowledge: knowledge of nature, of other humans, of ourselves from the inside, and of ourselves from the outside. He claimed that the last - knowledge of ourselves from the outside - was the most difficult kind of knowledge to achieve.

This is what friends are for: they are my teachers, directly and indirectly. And in turn I am their teacher.

So why would this knowledge be so difficult? I'm thinking about that, as I end another day in San Diego.