We have the capacity of “looking at ourselves from the outside,” so to speak. We can detach ourselves from our immediate concerns and ask, “How am I doing?” We can evaluate our actions. “Is it necessary for me to continue in the old-fashioned, mechanical and uncritical way of thinking and feeling?”
Just as we go back and forth from home to the job every day, seldom getting off the beaten path, we may keep thinking the same old thoughts and feeling the same old feelings, which are likely to be fearful, hostile, discouraged, and self-pitying ones.
However, we can enrich our lives by thinking along new lines, feeling new things, developing new interests, studying new subjects, looking at familiar objects from a new point of view, etc. We can become adventurers in the realm of ideas.
This can be accomplished largely through the use of words.
If we carry our ideas m our heads all the time, we are likely to be burdened by them and to think in circles. It may be helpful to write down our thoughts as they come to mind. When we write down what is going on, we are in a sense “liberated” from the burden of our thoughts. We can express one idea today and then go ahead and express a more complex or more subtle idea tomorrow. We can, through the careful use of words, travel far and discover new things.
And we can also tinker with reality and observe what is going on. And as we observe more carefully and think more meaningfully, the words we use to describe ourselves and what we perceive as real will change.
Writing is a process of “time binding” with words. It enables us to travel from the past into the future, from the familiar to the unfamiliar, from the simple to the complex. Of course, our words must be checked with realities as we go along.
We can make progress in self-discovery by being less “self-centered” than we used to be. Many of us are excessively self-centered. We do not develop our capacities as extensively as we should. We do not take a deep interest in what other people do, think, feel, and believe. However, if we have the support and encouragement of others and show a deep concern for their personal problems, we are likely to be stimulated to develop our own hidden talents more adequately, and to be of greater help to others.