One Apple A Day #887 - Know who you want to be
"Know thyself" is the famous exhortation from Socrates inscribed on the Temple of Apollo at Delphi.
Indeed, to know who we are is essential for just everything in life. Yet, it is also a never-ending quest because we never stop changing.
When we seek the answer to the question "Who am I?" we also run the risk to look backwards. To what we have done and not done, and use that to define who we are today. As if today is the end of the journey, not the beginning.
Psychologist Dan Gilbert calls this phenomenon, the "end of history illusion".
I spent a lot of time over the last ten years, seeking who I am. As you would expect, I haven't found a definite answer. Instead, I came up with even more questions. The most important of them is "Who do I want to be?"
It is a tricky question because it requires to look forward, into a future that doesn't exist yet. The only way to answer is by using my imagination.
Yet, I realised knowing who I want to be is even more important than knowing who I am. Because it allows me to choose my actions today to build the future I envision for tomorrow.
I am going to be different in the future.
I have no doubts about that because change is natural.
If I don't know who I want to be and act accordingly, somebody or something else will decide who I will be.