Do what you must do

So, can you figure this one out? Anyone? Raise your hand, c'mon, it's easy! (If you can figure this out, stop reading this immediately, and go get a life, seriously.) I have no idea what that means up there, well, I have a vague idea, but not much at all. If you were given this problem on a piece of paper, how confident are you that you would do well? Speaking for myself and 99.9% of my 3 reader population, I'm going to go with "no confidence whatsoever". Well why do we have no confidence in ourselves? It's simple, we don't know logarithmic calculus. Without knowledge on this particular subject, we have no confidence in it. It's pretty logical don't you think? You're also wondering why I'm doing this. (It has a purpose, really!)
Recently, I was talking to someone about self confidence. She was wondering outloud why she had little of it, and I asked her a couple questions and made some suggestions based on the previous paragraph. (I said something yesterday in my Loneliness entry about people not liking themselves, having no self esteem, confidence.) She asked, "Do I like myself?" I wrote this to her, "You can't like yourself until you know who you are. The question that you should first ask is: "Do I know myself?"
How can you like yourself and have confidence in yourself if you don't even know you? In a world where we run around at a hundred miles an hour (I should have just typed 100 mph) to get things done and make money and move up into the world, we often have little time to ourselves. What precious free time we have is taken up by other things like tv, movies, other people, or myriad things to keep us occupied. And when loneliness is lurking around the corner, we often don't want that alone time. That alone time can be so valuable though, don't fear it. Get to know who you are, in every aspect. Know yourself well, spend some quality time with you.
During my stint in California, I had to take a good, long hard look at who I had become after an incident where I was almost run down by a car. I had become someone obsessed with money, power, and girls (being bluntly honest here, yikes.) and had lost my decency and integrity in that quest. I was living for full hands and an empty heart. I took time alone with myself and didn't like what I saw, but it was something that had to be done.

"Be who you would be; then do what you must do"

Though I have only recently heard this quote, it applies to what happened in every sense. Be who you would be. After realizing that I didn't like myself anymore, I wrote down what kind of qualities I wanted to have as a person. I wrote down who I wanted to be, and I got to know that person. Then do what you must do. From then on, I tried to make every decision as that person. No, this was not a betrayal of who I was, it was a reach for someone better. It took a LONG time, and there were people who doubted I could do it, and even felt pushed away by this change; but it needed to happen. In some ways I am still working through it, several years afterwards.
You can't like yourself until you know who you are. If you don't like what you see, then be who you would be; and do what you must do.