Lesson 14 - Know Thyself

Hindsight is a funny thing.

The ability to see the thing that happened clearly once it’s past, even though we couldn’t see it well in the moment.

Good decisions, bad decisions, relationships, arguments… all of these things have much greater clarity when seen through the lens of hindsight.

In the moment we are oblivious.  We are blinded by fear, doubt, lack of perspective, anxiety, panic, and arrogance, for starters, but once the moment is past and the emotions settled, it’s easier to take the time and rethink the whole thing.  Clarity explodes into our vision, the blindness lifted, and understanding takes hold.

Those foggy moments of decision can make our motives equally fuzzy.  We blind ourselves to our real motive and ultimately blunder through not really understanding what is driving us.  Once hindsight kicks in, we are often found chastising ourselves for not seeing the whole picture or not making a better decision or not thinking things through well enough.

We didn’t know ourselves.

Gnothi seauton.  That is the Greek/English transliteration for the phrase which translates “Know Thyself.”

Humans are great deceivers of themselves.  We don’t always see ourselves for who we are.  Only who we think we are.  Or who we’ve been told we are.  But rarely who we actually are.

If we did, it would be much easier for us to regulate our motives and see the path we are walking.  Is it the path of greed?  Ambition?  

Love?

It’s easy to think it’s one thing when in fact it’s another.  This is because there is a part of us that knows what it should be, and we are rarely the “villains” of our own stories.  We are always the good guy or girl.  So, we alter our perspective of the details of any given situation to fit that idea of ourself, instead of being honest with ourself and altering our actions.

If you are driving your car and you get a flat tire and find out you ran over a nail, you immediately think back to where you might have hit it.  (Well, hopefully, you immediately pull off the road.)  This is because, if you had known there was a nail in the road, you would have tried quite hard to avoid it.  You wouldn’t purposely run over a nail.  That would be stupid.  Obviously, you had no idea there was a nail in the road.  You simply didn’t know.

But had you known there were nails all over the road, if you could see them clearly and then just drove right through anyway instead of circumnavigating or clearing a path, well, that would just make you look bad.  You would never do that unless you had no other choice.  It’s simply bad decision making.

Usually, however, in that particular example, we never know there was any problem with our path until the tire is flat or close to it.  We have no idea till it’s upon us and too late.

I remember when I was a kid, we would go out to the west coast to visit family.  I have a number of family out that way… cousin’s, uncles and grandparents.  One summer we went out to visit the grandparents and spent a lot of time helping grandpa remodel their house.  New room addition and New roof.  I was pretty young, so I did things like sweep up dirt and pick up trash.  My memory is again hazy, but I think I was in the vicinity of 7 years old.

That summer I met one of the neighbor kids.  His name was Bruce.  Well, I’m sure it still is Bruce, however, I’ve never seen him again since that summer.  Bruce was friendly and would come over and watch the work.  He and I became great friends.  And as it turned out, like my friend from last week, he also was an aspiring ninja.  He even taught me how to make “nunchaku” (nun chuks, for those of you who speak American.)  They were popularized in American culture by Bruce Lee movies and are martial arts weapon comprised of two cylindrical pieces of hard wood connected usually by a small strong chain. 

We, of course, didn’t have either.  Instead, we used a broom handle sawed into appropriate length pieces, connected by a leather shoe string nailed into the end of each piece.  We were quite resourceful for poor ninja.  My father, however, didn’t think so when he went to use the broom and found it to be significantly shorter than when he had left it earlier.

However, we were undeterred.  Off we went teaching ourselves the fine art of the nunchaku.  We looked ridiculous.  (Awesome… I meant awesome… umm…)

All the things you can do when your play ground is more or less a construction zone.  And it was nice to have someone to play with instead of being the grounds keeper for our entire vacation.  My brother and I basically spent a lot of time helping dad and grandpa pick up all the wood and nails that came off the old roof and walls so that no one would step on them or otherwise injure themselves.  

We did a pretty thorough job too.  Even my dad was impressed.  However, as you all know, you always miss that one thing.

Bruce and I were practicing our ninja skills with the nunchaku, which included learning to use them on the run and also the art of scaling fences.  There was an old fence between his yard and grandpa’s and we would pull ourselves up onto it and leap off, landing ninja style on the other side.  

Ninja style landings, as everyone knows, means you land in a crouch, either two footed or one foot and one knee, and with one hand on the ground and the other on your weapon.  I actually can’t prove this is the “official” ninja landing, but we were convinced at the time.  

One fateful attempt, I made a stunningly beautiful landing (uh huh…), got up and kept right on running.  I only realized later, as I saw blood running freely from my left palm, that I had land and planted my hand on a nailed piece of wood that we hadn’t found, which was laying in the tall grass into which we had leapt, and drove that nail mostly through my hand.

I hadn’t felt a thing.

It wasn’t until I saw the blood that I realized anything had gone wrong.

Once I did, I cried like baby, mostly from shock and fear.  Because I hadn’t even notice.  Hadn’t felt a thing.  Didn’t even know it had happened.  Not until I saw the blood.  

Last week we talked about shifting our motives and intentions to love.  That this love change is the beginning.

Most people, however, would argue that this is how they view their lives.  And, I’m not going to argue about who is or isn’t using love as their motivator in all things.  I’m just going to say that none of us are as awesome in this department as we think we are.

And this is often part of our problem.  We think we are something we are not.  We think we know ourselves, but we don’t.  We think everything is cool and our motives perfectly fine and that nothing is wrong.  And if that is true, how can we ever know what and where or even if our motives need shifting?

That answer, is both hard and simple at the same time.
     You will know when you see the blood.