The Knowing; Cliff Notes

Knowing who you are is so much more than knowing what you'll eat when you wake up in the morning, what clothes you wear down to threads, or what kind of people you like hanging out with.  Knowing who you are is so much more than looking into your heart and seeing what's there; most likely a lot of things you don't even see are hiding in the the creases of that organ and the surprises will inform your life as much as the textures you touch every day. 

Knowing yourself is knowing what you'll do at the edge of a cliff with a crowd of knives at your back; whether you choose to turn and fight the blades knowing you'll shed your own blood more than anyone else's or if you choose to jump into thin merciless air that will deliver you to the rocks below; who you are is written in the choices you make when every choice is shit impossible, your mouth is full of sand, and your eyes are blinded by sun.  Knowing yourself is to remember, (or to never forget) your feral origins and to carry it with you everywhere you go because it is the seed from which all your delicate philosophies and fine language grow.

Some people spend their lives looking for themselves in mirrors, empty barges drifting precariously towards the mouth of hell, at the bottom of pithy bottles of poison, through dreams and reconciliations never fully realized; wearing dresses of tulle and bridal satin or suits of steel wool.  Some people never find themselves until the last minute.  Others discover who they are through various experiences, like street tests to evaluate nature.

Some people are born knowing who they are.  Some people are born with a deeply grooved sense of self as though written long ago and just playing out again in this fresh skin. 

I have always known who I am.

I have always known what I would do at the edge of the cliff and even though I still had to play the damn thing out, I turned, as though in a daft dream, and walked right through the daggers and though I nearly bled to death doing it there was never any real question that I would turn to them and fight my way back to the living.  Every action I tried to turn against that fact was wasted and empty.

Perhaps knowing one's self sounds like a life already finished, but I'm here to tell you it's not.  We are always beginning fresh from this point we're sitting at in the present.  I know who I am, who I've been, and what I'm made of, but I have never already become my best self.  I have never already reached the maximum potential I'm capable of.  And neither have you.  Even if you know yourself and have remembered yourself from the very beginning (wherever you believe that is), there is always more. 

Because none of us can know who we are going to become.