living with yourself

Two posts in one day...I'm so chatty.

Something I've been thinking a lot about lately is how self-perception can blind you. All of us know people who we would consider to be assholes or idiots or something negative. My question is do they know that they are an asshole, or whatever? What did Adolf Hitler think of himself? Did he think that he was an evil person? I think that its fairly clear that he likely didn't think he was evil, but rather thought he was doing the right thing. In the same way, I believe that the people around us who are stupid or jerks or misguided at best have no idea that they are that way. They are simply making what they consider to be the best decision(s) as they face them.

So what does this mean? This means that we can be living our lives, thinking we are a good, intelligent person, but in reality be a complete moron or a complete asshole or whatever. Think about it, if you were an asshole how would you be able to tell (unless you had a good friend like Kevin to constantly remind you that you are one)?

All my life I've believed that I was a good, intelligent, hard working person. But how do I know that I am? I think that too often I rely on my own optimistic ego to cloud my self-perception without sufficient evidence. Recently though it has occurred to me that perhaps I am not as good of a person as I thought. I look back on things I've done or relationships I've lost that I've reasoned were inevitable or at least not my fault and now see how culpable I perhaps am. I look back at my intentions that I once thought to be above reproach and now see as stained with arrogance and selfishness.

The hard part is not only identifying that you are this way but also preventing it from happening again. Life rarely presents you with clear black and white choices. Over time entropy takes over parts of your life where I don't exert absolute control. Over time, without my direct effort, I become lazy, prideful, and self-serving, all the while cocooned by my false self-perceptions.

The only solution is to force myself to become the person I want to be. I can't just expect to be a good person unless I act like one. And acting like a good person means slowing down and considering each choice I make every day, in all moments and finding the choice that best fits with the person I want to become. Its too easy to shut down and run on instinct. But in order to avoid a life of mediocrity I have to maintain awareness. I need to focus on what I want and seize every opportunity to get myself there. Otherwise I will find myself constantly slipping away from who I want to be, and I will be the unaware asshole for my whole life, always wondering why things never work out the way I want them to.