What do you really know? Do you know what you don’t know? Are you working to know what you currently don’t know? Investigating and examining everything you know and bring it home to yourself, to see how you feel about it is how you become a person. Personally I know very little, I know a little of what I don’t know, and I’m trying to work on what I don’t know.
People are generally filled with views and opinions, most of which come from other people. When asked to explain or justify their views, they are often unsure as to why, or answer that such and such believes it so I believe it. Copying the wording of the original seed planter is also quite common. I find it scary that people accept what others say at such face value.
Questioning what you know for it’s validity, or if you believe it personally is not something I see promoted. Society/Media seem to work together to create hysteria about a certain set of values and belief, with anything outside not being cool. Everyone wants to be cool, they wear the clothes, they say the things, they watch the shows, they eat the food without thinking about what and why they really do what they do.
One of the biggest mistakes you can make in life is to accept the known and resist the unknown. You should, in fact, do exactly the opposite: challenge the known and embrace the unknown.(Guy Kawasaki)
Becoming a person is about examining the contents of your beliefs and values. Working out the reality, defining your own understanding, learning from yourself, walking your own path in life, not following someone else’ vision for you. It’s about direct, personal experience rather than reading about it on a screen. Now get out there and experience, examine and discover, become your own person.
(A great book by Carl Rogers has this almost very same title. Rogers is a Psychologist who started the movement in Humanistic Psychology. For anyone interested in becoming their own person, I’d suggest the read (aff)On Becoming A Person
A Google Video discussing The Role of Spiritual Practice in the Modern World touches on this topic as well.
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