WEDNESDAY, 21 DECEMBER 2016
You get to know yourself in varied situations: by travelling to foreign countries, by spending time with people you don’t really like, and in trying times, alone or with other people.
You also learn about yourself by speculating with money, say on the financial markets. You observe how you feel and act when you end up with some profit, and how you feel and behave after a loss. You also learn how you feel and how you act after a catastrophic mishap.
How long it takes you to give up is another important thing you learn about yourself, as well as how long you keep doing something simply because you don’t want to give up, even though a stick blind man can see you’re getting nowhere.
Does it qualify as giving up if you shift your experience to something else, or when you apply things you have learned to an entirely different market? Would you then still think you wasted your time? Would you still think you wasted your money?
How do you calculate “profit” when it comes to self-knowledge? And does it necessarily mean it was less of a waste of time just because you learned a few useful things about yourself?
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