Dear friend,

I think a lot of us are trying to find ourselves.

I. Know yourself.

Know thyself! – Oracle at Delphi

The most ancient form of philosophical knowledge was self knowledge.

To me, it makes sense. We can never fully understand others. But we can seek to understand ourselves.

One of the ways I’ve been able to find myself is through blogging. I treat every blog post as a chance for me to better understand myself a little better. But like Heraclitus said:

All of life is in flux.

Meaning, we are constantly changing. The person we were a year ago isn’t the same person as we are today. Physically in terms of our atom configuration, we are being renewed, changed, everyday.

If you looked at yourself as a five year old, is that really you? The only thing that you can link yourself to that five year old kid is though a sense of continuity, and memories via photographs. But in terms of your biology, you are a totally different person today than your five year old self.

II. Write your own life story

I’ve recently been digging into my personal history, by interviewing my mom, and also by recollecting my personal memories– writing personal memories and stories via blog posts. I wrote “SCARS.” and “WHY I CUT MY DAD OUT OF MY LIFE“, to understand how I became who I am.

Of course we will fall into the “narrative fallacy”– we often make up stories of our lives and make these spurious connections, which often are false. Which means, a lot of our memories are misremembered, or made up.

Regardless, by digging into my personal history, I learned where my sense of hustle came from. The fact that I grew up poor, it forced me to innovate, work hard, and hustle to get what I wanted. I also learned how to be a good man, by being the exact opposite of my dad. He was a great anti role model.

So I recommend you to start you own blog, via WordPress.com or medium.com, and just write public diaries or mini memoirs. It is hard to write a book, but easy to write blog posts. So just write a bunch of blog posts, and just string together your pearls at the end.

Homework assignment: write a letter to your 12-year old self.

III. You are not your past

I like to think we have control over who we are, and we can control our destinies.

To me, I think we are what we do. We are our actions.

For example, I don’t want to be trapped in my past history. I want to write my own history.

Therefore, I am what I create. I am a poet, photographer, blogger, Youtuber, and teacher based on my creations. And in terms of my relationships, I am a husband, a son, a nephew, a brother, and a friend to all of humankind.

What do you create on a daily basis? What is your passion? What do you create or produce?

Homework assignment: Write down a list of things you’ve created in the last month. Do you associate that with who you are?

Conclusion

Honestly, I think it is a waste of time trying to find out who you are. Rather, it is a better investment of your time to create the person you want to become.

For example, if you want to be a photographer, make more photos. Just shoot it.

If you want to be a poet, write more poems.

If you want to be a good parent, spend more time with your kids without looking at your phone.

If you want to be a blogger, blog and publish more.

You can be and do anything you want to be; just make and publish new things, daily.

Be strong,
Eric