Wellness Calendar: Tuesday 2 December

The second revolution
[Trusting, understanding & knowing yourself; self-reliance]
If you do not understand yourself, if you are not aware of how you tick or what is going on inside you, moment by moment, you are going to be a real liability to yourself and those around you. You have the potential to do all sorts of harm, with potentially far-reaching consequences in an unforgiving world. We call this the average person blues.
So, perhaps it’s little wonder that trust is thin on the ground – not just people unwilling to trust other people, but people not trusting themselves.
Unknowing and untrusting seem to go hand in hand. How can you trust yourself when you don’t know yourself? How can you know yourself if you don’t trust yourself – or trust yourself to know?
Is this how we’ve ended up with a world full of people who we’re told to trust, because they’re in positions of authority, even though we know we cannot trust them? Because, just like us, they don’t understand themselves, nor do they understand us, because one shirt does not fit all and everyone experiences the world differently?
John Holt said, “Most of us were taught as children that we could not be trusted.” If that is so, this never-ending cycle can only be altered by ourselves, with what could be our second revolution: trusting thyself to understand thyself to know thyself (to trust thyself to understand thyself know thyself to – and so on).
If you can take a leap of faith and believe in yourself and your ability to learn, there’s no reason why you can’t become self-reliant when it comes to knowing yourself, trusting yourself and being yourself.
“I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of people to elevate their life by conscious endeavour.”
Henry David Thoreau