A confident and consistent self-image is the bedrock reference point for one’s belief system, decision making and overt action. As the swift current of life inevitably courses on, we need to recognize our own participation in it, as responsibly aware and credibly distinct personalities.
Others get to know us and take our meaning and intention from their observation of our action and their awareness of our avowed points of view. Even more critical is our own individual knowledge and awareness of our personal, private identity known as our “self.” This is our essential compass which directs and orchestrates our understanding of rectitude and moral choices. Those who lack a confident, consistent “self” usually are destined to lead a rudderless, confusing and meaningless existence during their stay on the planet.
To be sure, one is always capable, by dint of newly attained enlightenment and sufficient contemplation, to alter his internal self- portrait, but even such a change must embark from a designated starting point and proceed to the newly established one, hopefully, by a rationally guided compass.
In one of the classic cartoon strips, “Pogo” the sage cartoonist, Walt Kelly, depicts his ever-present hero. “Pogo the Opossum” portrayed in Napoleonic battle dress, in front of a still- smoking cannon, proudly brandishing his saber and stating: “We have met the enemy and he is us!”
The opinions and judgments of individuals, who are seen as possessed of healthy and a well -adjusted persona, are, for such reason, worthy of consideration since the same are presumed to have been made thoughtfully and free from outside influence.
In the preceding blog, we urged the need to maintain a secure self-image to serve as an inner-directed guide in making moral choices, and the futility of the reductive rewards- punishment regime (Blog#72).
It has been said somewhere, “A Man’s Home Is His Castle.” This may have some cognizable value as to the rights of ownership and privacy; but a home and castle are only real estate. The essential habitation of man is found in his mature understanding of his personal identity, his “self.”
-p.
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