Am I too aware of me?

Wise men (yes, I say that because I don't remember who they were, so might as well make up for it by making them feel good) often say that we should try to become self-aware. "Be in tune with yourself", "listen to your self", "know thyself", you get the point? That seemed like pretty good advice to me, so I tried to do that - be aware of what went through my head, why I react the way I do to certain things, why something makes me happy or sad. And I can say with confidence that I don't like what I see :)

The more I try to find a reason behind my feelings and actions, the deeper I dwell into my mental maps, the more I find pathways and trails that don't actually exist for the "right" reasons. Sometimes I have thoughts that are not technically the right thoughts to have in that situation - traces of envy, bits of "let me see if I can beat that" and the general set of their relatives and friends. And now am left wondering if I should have maybe left the thought aside, packed my feelings up after the requisite amount of time, instead of prodding them, digging in deeper and figuring out that am not a saint. Know what I mean? Maybe the feeling would have passed, the thought would have faded and I would have carried on blissfully unaware of my imperfections. But, now I have the thought and the feeling in addition to the "knowledge" that I am not perfect.

Yes, I know nobody is. One could argue that this process might make me consciously feel better thoughts, feel the right feelings the next time. Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe the next time, I will still feel the same not-justifiable feelings but only with more awareness that am feeling them!

Reminds of something P~ said a while back about having a mean thought and not voicing it. Do we become better people by being civil and not voicing it? We become better by not having such thoughts in the first place. But then the thought has already lodged itself inside our heads now. Does that make us bad people?

I guess I already know that we all are human beings, flaws and all, with selflessness and selfishness co-existing side-by-side but just like everyone else (yeah, yeah, am taking the whole world down with me, that way I can say, “just like everyone else”!), I don’t like finding faults in myself. I like it even less than having my faults told to me by others (heaven forbid! :)...maybe it's ok for me to not be so aware. Maybe it's ok to be ignorant, sometimes!

Reminds me of an article I read recently about how religious tolerance is not that great, especially when it’s superficial. Sometimes, it’s good to get out all your prejudices and faults out in the open. Maybe we do that but we just don’t go overboard doing that?

Qn: Ramya, why do you do this? Impose such heaviness on our light-hearted readers on a Friday?
Ans: Sigh! My apologies. Anyway I don't know if I really mean what I say because am not really self-aware yet! Guess they just will read(?) this and move on. After all TGIF! :)

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