Know thyself?

Events in the past months have made an impact on my life for better or for worse. So I decided that perhaps it was an appropriate time to write up a new 'about me' description. The question that is staring me straight in the face is this. What do I really know about myself?

With each passing day as I grow older, there seems to be more and more questions but no answers. Are we not supposed to grow wiser with age? Grownups are supposed to have the world all figured out so that they may pass on their knowledge to their children, right? So why is it that as I approach adulthood, things seem more uncertain than they have ever been? It almost feels as if the floodgates have opened and I have nothing to hang on to. Is this the curse of an over-active mind? I'm wondering if everyone at some point or another ponder these questions to the depth that I do? Surely there are people out there who do not worry about things like these. The happy-go-lucky type who takes things one day at a time *sigh* wouldn't it be nice...

Hmm...so recently too...I had an opportunity to speak with this person that I have not seen for many, many years. She struck me as being pretty self-confident about her views on life and all that. The incident reminds me of people I have met over the past few years. While it is neither good nor bad, the western culture promotes self-confidence like it was the best thing that could happen to a person. Is it really? Having not travelled the world and lived in all the different cultures, having not lived through all the stages of life, having not experienced everything there is to experience...how is it that we can say with any conviction that...I believe in this...or I am that?

Once read a saying which goes something to the effect of not judging a person's actions because under the right circumstances, we ourselves might do the same thing.

Something that comes to mind right now is the ever famous story of the robber and the pharmacist. If a person breaks into a pharmacy to steal medication for her mother who really needed it to live, would you blame her? While it is wrong to steal, would you personally leave your own mother for death? Would you... really? Why did the pharmacist not have sympathy for such a hopeless case? If the pharmacist did begin to give out free meds, what's the point of opening up a business, right? See people, it's all a matter of perspective.