Know Thyself

Who are you? Can you actually answer that question? I mean without writing an essay-long comment on this post (for clarification, I would welcome an essay-long comment on this post, if it meant people actually commented more than once, in fact go ahead! but I digress). I wonder how many of us truly know who we are, and what "being me" truly entitles. In literature the only characters people relate themselves to are the complex main characters of the story. The teen-age boy struggling between honoring his parents and his past and being his own man; the daughter desperately searching for her identity in a world that she feels she's abandoned her. Even still, these literary characters only offer us a fleeting glimpse into what we might deal with as human beings.
Even though we relate ourselves to these characters, they still fall short of defining us. It is a shame that our english language lacks the words to fully express who a person is. Instead we are a hodgepodge of nevaeu vernacular--words we either made up or else contorted to better fit the way we see ourselves. We wear patchwork hats of identity, and pull the most appropriate color foward to display depending on the situation. Today I will be a poet...Today I will be a car guy...Today I am a musician. Our immediate environment dictates to us who we are at that moment.
Our environments are temporary and fleeting. So why then do we allow ourselves to be clearly defined for a moment? It is possible, that by searching out every angle that is you, and understanding who you truly are, one may come across as pretentious. But why is understanding both your shortcomings and strong qualities such a bad thing? To know how one functions in all parts of your small take o the world is the only way one can help somone find answers with their problems.
Your friend asks you to give them advice on a very serious matter, how do you as a friend (but more improtably as a good person) offer them sound advice without first knowing how your would respond in that situation? You cannot offer clear sound advice to a person, advice that unviels all possible outcomes on their perspective of the world unless you have that very understanding of yourself. When we give up our multicolored hats and take the one that says "me" then we can take on the world, with the comfortbale knowledge that what ever situation is handed to us, we can and will come through.