Brain Food #669
Being true to yourself
Thoughts of the day
Today would have been the 99th birthday of American writer Kurt Vonnegut, but also the 200th birthday of Fyodor Dostoevsky. Born almost 100 years apart, the two men touched upon a very similar theme, their words still relevant today.
From Vonnegut:
“We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend to be.”
And from Dostoevsky:
“Above all, don't lie to yourself. The man who lies to himself and listens to his own lie comes to a point that he cannot distinguish the truth within him, or around him, and so loses all respect for himself and for others. And having no respect he ceases to love.”
What Vonnegut is saying is that our thoughts might be at odds with our actions, but unless our thoughts are expressed, our actions are what remain, and how we allow others to perceive us. Dostoevsky takes this a step further, claiming that by lying to ourselves we eventually lose our own sense of truth, and with it, our sense of self.
Being true to ourselves becomes an act of self-respect, and through self-respect we gain the respect of others. It may not be the key to happiness, but the key to truthful living.
An exercise of honesty you can easily undertake is writing in your journal, where the act is not for anyone else, but yourself.
If you have other talents, you might try capturing your true self in an image. Below are two of Pablo Picasso’s self-portraits, from 1896 and 1901. Though he appears considerably older in the second one, Picasso was only twenty when he painted it. Sometimes, we change.
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