Something Horrifying - 'Romantic' Self Portrait

First let me tell you again what kind of 'Romantic' I mean. I could have used the term 'idealized' or 'idealist' but I rather use the term 'romantic' because of the implicit connotations that the word brings in for the person for whom the word is used for. It is more than 'ideal', 'biased'. It is all that but it is all but ostensibly it contains more 'Good' in it that something prejudiced.

Now, what I want to write today about is just too trivial. I know I usually write about vivid and obvious stuff...but this one just takes it a step further. It is in fact so trivial that I fail to notice it all the time. Though I maybe noticing it now, I will probably fail to notice it soon after I finish this writing, or maybe even during the writing!! I was just thinking how as beings we learn something and establish it through habits. Some of the things we learn are ok, they help us commit to our daily activities and facilitate our living. Other stuff we learn though, when we put into habits, we fail to notice to rest of what is still unlearned, maybe like a photo of a tiny flower, or a little girl that invites you to think about what is in the framework of that photo. I know this may apply to critique of technology as a whole, but I am not going Heideggerian on you today. What I was thinking about today is much simpler.

I noticed that I just like how I learn about stuff surrounding me, I also learn about what and who I am. What induced horror in me was that most probably, just like how on countless occasions my knowledge of my surroundings was prejudiced, my view of myself too must be prejudiced in one way or another. When I thought harder about it, I noticed that though it sound horrible, it is something very trivial. We tend to ignore our prejudices of our self because first of all they are so close to us, it's hard to see them. They are like stains of dirt to lenses through which we see and learn about the world...we fail to notice them because things 'go on' and 'get done' with or without them. It's probably very nice to be able to clear your lenses, and learn about your self so well that you would start seeing the world as you, yourself would see it.

Think about it though, have you ever has those thoughts of passionate love for someone, who maybe you only met a few times, and be so sure of it too, only to find out a few days later that it was just a fluke? Now this next example is so prominent: procrastination; have you ever organized an elaborate plan to commit time to your studies and then just failed to do it? As you can see your sense of yourself, and your capabilities can be quite different from what you actually are. I had to make examples of things you plan ahead for; things for which you create an image of yourself in the future. You could also think of stuff that you thought you've been like in the past, talk to your close friends, and maybe it'll come out that you were completely wrong. There was an interesting sentence that I heard today that inspired this post, and I want to use it to end the post, since this is already taking too long for your ultra short attention span. I should consider myself lucky if you've read this far already:

"To find out who you are, you have to look back at tapes and videos of you life, and very often that picture would be very different from the perception of yourself simply from a momentary bit of introspection." R.C.Solomon