Expand Your World

To know oneself one would have to have an understanding of how the people around them view one and how oneself views themselves.  This is a very simplified answer.  Personally I don’t want to truly understand myself.  One, because if I truly understood my own being then I would have a complete understanding of, at the very least, one human being, and that knowledge would be too much for me.  Two, if I completely knew myself then my life from that point of understanding, would be the most boring existence ever.  What is the point of living if I don’t get to discover anything new about myself.  Part of the beauty about life and existence is that we don’t truly know ourselves and we are always surprising ourselves with new likes and dislikes and new experiences.  One positive thing to come out of complete self understanding is that because your life would seem boring one would be inclined to search to learn more about other people.  Because quite literally “the world ends with you.”  If one wishes to expand their world once they have learned all there is to know about themselves the only way to continue with new experiences and to keep life interesting is to expand and learn about other people and forge connections with others.

            One of my personal weaknesses is that I take things way too personally.  I am not good at taking jokes that attack my personal traits and am quick to throw a joke at someone attacking them but expecting them to react in a positive way.  Due to my ‘seriousness’ I oftentimes create strife between a good friend over a meaningless and harmless joke or prank.  This is mostly due to some self-confidence issues and my self conscious manner.  I have tried tirelessly to combat this weakness by just always being aware of myself and using a little self control.  If a joke is thrown my way, I will still hurt inside but I will hide it.  Not the best system to combat it because even though the joke or prank has no bad intentions I still hurt on the inside.

            I think my greatest strength is my ability to entertain and teach those younger than me.  I love helping out with kids and babysitting and have a great talent for making babies and young children entertained.  I have always known that one of the two greatest things that I will do with my life is to be a father and raise children.  The other being to have my children carry on the Jewish faith.  I think I am good at teaching and entertaining kids not because they are especially easy to please but because I still feel like a little kid on the inside, perhaps due to my insecurities.  I am really able to connect to what children are feeling and what they need.  I eagerly look forward to fatherhood.

            It is extremely difficult to talk about myself.  Partly because I am very bad at finding and naming my strengths but can easily name my weaknesses.  This self reflection also forces me to think about what I am doing wrong and how I can go about bettering myself.  I will tell myself that I will make changes in my life but wishful thinking can only get me so far as I am only myself and in the end am only the same person as I was when I started.