Know Yourself 9-18-2010 (Part 1)

 I confess I failed at this during my life. I had a talent for overcomplicating and for compartmentalizing my life. Compartments and complication are not unrelated. Self-ignorance may also have a causal connection with an overly complex life.

I have given more thought to myself since March 2010, than I did before, when I merely condemned myself out of hand. Since I got to the Volunteers of America facility and had my WTF epiphany, I have been trying to examine myself. I never thought myself as smart as others did, just smart enough. (Well, not smart enough to get the proper treatment for my depression.) I thought I had done terrible things and was capable of more. Then I ran across true evil and found myself as much a mediocrity in that department as in all the others. I had been here in this halfway house, scribbling away, when I began reading St. Augustine's Confessions (appropriately July 2010), and then found this passage in X.iii.(3):

What then have I to do with men, that they should hear my confessions, as if they were going to cure all my diseases? A people curious to know the lives of others, but slow to correct their own. Why do they desire to hear from me what I am, who are unwilling to hear from You what they are? And how can they tell, when they hear from me of myself, whether I speak the truth, seeing that no man knows what is in man, save the spirit of man which is in him ? 1 Corinthians 2:11 But if they hear from You anything concerning themselves, they will not be able to say, The Lord lies. For what is it to hear from You of themselves, but to know themselves? And who is he that knows himself and says, It is false, unless he himself lies? But because charity believes all things 1 Corinthians 13:7 (among those at all events whom by union with itself it makes one), I too, O Lord, also so confess unto You that men may hear, to whom I cannot prove whether I confess the truth, yet do they believe me whose ears charity opens unto me.

I recognize the idea. I can only hope to be as honest as possible in the hope of edifying anyone reading this. (I suggest reading St. Augustine at X.iv.(5).) I do not do this for profit, but to educate.

Do not say you could not end up as I have unless you work hard at avoiding my errors. Do not say you are dealing with depression unless you are getting treatment.

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[Continued in Know Yourself 9-18-2010 (Part 2)]