Thinking Out Loud: The Begining

Perhaps it has sometimes occurred to you, dear reader, to doubt the correctness of the familiar philosophical proposition that the outward is the inward, the inward the outward. You yourself have perhaps nursed a secret which, in its joy or pain, you felt was too precious for you to be able to initiate others into it. Your life has perhaps brought you into touch with people of whom you suspected something of the kind, yet without being able to wrest their secret from them by force or guile.

--Victor Eremita [A pseudonym of Soren Kierkegaard], from Either/Or

I am living a lie. The way I live my life, the things I say, and the people I surround myself with would lead someone to develop an idea of who I am that is inconsistent with the person I know myself to be.

Socrates’ admonishment ‘Know Thyself’ could not be anymore useless to me. My problem is not that I do not know myself, but that I fail to live out a life that is consisten with the person I know myself to be. Socrates would have better served me if he explained how to ‘be thyself’. Socrates’ fatal error was that he assumed once a person comes to know himself it automatically follows that he will be himself—he assumed that the inner will automatically become the outer. But nothing has been more contrary to my experience. The inner becomes the outer only through a bold act of courage wherein one chooses to be oneself. What I lack is not knowledge but courage.

So I have chosen to write this blog as an act of courage. Given it is a very small act of courage to write a blog which no one I know will read. Nevertheless it is a step in the right direction. It is a step towards disclosing the inner to the outer—a step towards becoming myself.

I hope that in disclosing myself here I will not only be emboldened to live out of my true self, but also that this will serve as a sort of therapy, both for me and for the reader. I do not write merely for myself, but also for others who are in my situation. I hope that they will relate to my thoughts, find that they are not alone, and perhaps even benefit from my reflections.

So here are my thoughts and my stories which otherwise would go unsaid. Here I am giving voice to the inner that it may become the outer.

This is me trying to become myself.

This is me thinking out loud.