“Everyone has the Obligation…”
December 19, 2007
“Everyone has the obligation to ponder well his own specific traits of character. He must also regulate them adequately and not wonder whether someone else’s traits might suit him better. The more definitely his own a man’s character is, the better it fits him.”
- Cicero
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December 21, 2007 at 12:55 AM
Very true but hard to practice. I find it’s easier to be a copycat and copy other people’s traits that we admire. I guess this takes a lot of self-knowledge and self-acceptance.
December 21, 2007 at 4:35 PM
I don’t think that’s necessarily a bad thing, Nezha. Perhaps it comes down to whether the traits we copy from others alienate us from ourselves or not.
A simple example of that would be the athletic kid who finds a role model in a famous athlete. A kid who does that has found a way to copy traits from someone and yet remain true to herself.
But what of the people who copy traits that alienate them from their true selves?
December 23, 2007 at 11:53 PM
Wow … I had a really strong knee-jerk reaction to this quote, kind of along the lines of “Hey, what a great way to remain completely unbalanced!”
Personally I feel that it is important to push one’s limits and boundaries … not to the point of becoming inauthentic, certainly … but for the sake of leaven and balance. For example, I am far more introspective than sociable. I do admire sociable people for their sociability, and I think it’s good for me to observe how such people interact,and to try it sometimes, even when it seems uncomfortable and unnatural. I think that emulating admirable traits of others is one of the ways we grow as people. Doing this does not make me less introspective; but it does help make me more well-rounded.
I don’t mean to suggest that we should try to become someone we’re not … but rather, that testing our limits is a healthy thing, especially if we do it out of admiration,rather than envy.
December 24, 2007 at 2:01 AM
Those are very good concerns, David, and I think they point out some of the subtleties of being true to oneself. Thank you!
The art, of course, is to learn from others without alienating oneself from one’s own nature. That, I think, can be done if one is good at adapting what one learns to oneself.
To take a very simple example — many of us learn to write legibly pretty much by at first aping an accepted script. Yet, we soon turn that into our own recognizably unique style of handwriting, which, hopefully, is still legible.