Knowing yourself is something that has layers to it. You can't just know your hair color or eye color or date of birth. Knowing yourself is much deeper than that, and it’s not something anyone can teach you. Knowing yourself means you know your likes and dislikes, you know your faults, you know your strengths and appreciate them for what they are. Knowing yourself means you accept you aren’t perfect, but you can still appreciate the qualities you have. Knowing yourself, most importantly, means knowing your limits. People who push themselves to strive to be something they cannot do not really know themselves. Accepting your limits and knowing when you’ve truly done all you can do to the best of your ability is the key to knowing yourself.
My worst quality is one that has plagued all kinds of relationships in my life: my inability to trust. I have many friends, and a few close friends, and still I find it hard to trust them with secrets, possessions, or even their stories. I have this suspicious air about me often, and usually assume people are lying to me. I don’t know when or why this quality came about, but it has, and now I must learn to deal with it. I do so by trying my best to believe others. I remind myself that not everyone is a liar, and that most people tend not to. I started small, trusting only a few very close friends and family, and believe that, as they have proven trustworthy, I can breach out and be more trusting of others. Of course, I don’t think I’ll be going around spewing my life story at strangers, but I try not to be so closed-off to the world, and more eager to make and actually trust my friends.
I believe one of my best qualities (although this may seem a bit ironic) is how trustworthy I am. And many people seem drawn to this, telling me things about them after having known them for just a short while. I’ve had people treat me as a shoulder to lean on, a shoulder to cry on, or just someone to talk to, like an amateur psychologist. I never spill secrets to others, knowing from my own feelings about how hard it is to maintain someone’s trust. I pride myself in being a confidant. Unless I feel someone is in danger of hurting his or herself, (it’s happened) or being hurt by someone else (hasn’t happened, thankfully), I keep peoples’ secrets to myself. I’m honored that they’d trust me with useless information (who likes who, who said what about who, normal high school drama), and intend to keep it that way. There’s nothing in it for me in spilling other secrets. And when I trust so little, I feel it’s important for me to be trustworthy, or else I’d feel like a hypocrite.
It’s hard to talk about my strengths and weaknesses because I’m only 17 years old. I haven’t fully developed in brain or body, and how can you ‘know’ something that’s unfinished? I don’t know who I’ll be in ten years or even five years. I don’t know what college I’m going to or what my major will be or who I’ll end up living with… And with that much mystery in my life, I don’t think it’s possible to fully know myself, or fully know my strengths, weaknesses, abilities and limits. So I’ve told of my strengths and weaknesses now. I think you should ask this again in five years. And then in ten.
