To know oneself is to understand every aspect of one’s personality, thoughts, and emotions. It is to completely discover who you are. In the philosophical sense, it is not just knowing what kind of food you like or what your favorite color is, but to comprehend exactly what and who you are at the most basic level. The goal of knowing oneself completely is that, by understanding yourself, you can understand all other humans and the human condition.
This knowledge is important to both an individual and the community as a whole. On a large scale, if you can understand the human condition, or even a single aspect of it, you can change the world. There would be no need to class or racial or ethnic distinctions because everyone is on the same level (except, or course, for the aliens). Individually, self-knowledge can lead to fulfillment of life. If I know every aspect of myself, I can better understand what will make me feel happy and satisfied.
My own greatest weakness is that I only put in the bare minimum of work to get a job done. For example, if I know that I can write a single draft for an essay for English, then that’s what I’ll do, even if the essay would be better with a second draft. This negatively affects things like college applications. While I can get away with one draft for school, I cannot do something like that for college. But, I’ve been so trained to write something quickly and then submit it that I find it extremely difficult to try to edit my own work. This quality also contributes to my procrastination. I know that I’ll be able to complete the homework, so I wait and wait to do it until the absolute last minute. I try to change my behavior by obsessively planning my life in my agenda pad, but, even as I’m scheduling my life, I know it’s never going to turn out that way.
My best quality is that I have the ability to juggle a lot of things at once. Interestingly enough, this is only possible because of my worst quality. A lot of people seem surprised that, as a senior, I’m taking AP Chemistry, AP Physics, AP Calc AB, Honors Latin, Honors Humanities, and Music Theory. I also do ballet between ten and fifteen hours a week in addition to being active in my church and taking piano lessons. But, it’s not as if I have a 4.0 GPA, am going to be a professional ballerina, or am a virtuoso. I have to sacrifice some quality for quantity. If I have a chemistry test the same day I have a physics test (which, thankfully, has only happened once this year), I’m not going to have time to study adequately for both of them, especially because I have other homework on top of it. I have the ability to do all of these things, so I choose to do them. This feeds directly into another facet of my worst quality, which is that I’m pretty good at a lot of things, but I don’t have one clear strength.
Admitting my worst quality and accurately portraying my best quality are really difficult. Foremost, it is difficult to figure out what qualities are my best and worst. I’m bad and good at a lot of things, but to figure out what the underlying issue is tough. My worst quality is something that I don’t want to admit, mostly to myself. I feel that once I can identify the problem, then I’m responsible for fixing it. But, my worst quality being laziness, it makes it doubly difficult to fix the problem because to fix it will require work. Describing my best quality is equally as difficult because I’m trying not to brag, but I’m also trying not to be modest. It’s a delicate balance to strike, and it’s extremely hard to find it. It’s uncomfortable to say, “Hey, look at how awesome I am,” and it’s equally as uncomfortable to say, “I really am terrible at these things.” To try to understand myself requires a patience which I do not always possess, and to tell other people what I’ve learned takes a bit of courage because, once you admit it, there’s no taking it back.
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