THE TRUTH ABOUT OURSELVES

From the viewpoint of self-knowledge, we can distinguish three zones in our personalities. The first zone is our "self-image". A person's self-image is the picture he has of himself.Each of us has a mental picture of himself. Some of us may picture ourselves as charming like our batch mates Portiabeth, Annie, and cute as Dalin and Luningning Catarin (pasensiya na lang sa mga hindi ko na mention), intelligent like Lowell and Jessie , friendly and cheerful like Lito, Raymundo, Henry, , Jojo etc.( yan mga tol, sana makahalata kayo,libre niyo ako ha? Mcdo pwede na) and good-looking (siyempre ako na ito, huwag ng umangal pa hating magkakapatid naman, puro na lang sa inyo e hehehehe). Some of us picture themselves in negative aspects.

We are not altogether responsible for our own self-images.To a great extent, our parents have painted our self-images for us, that sometimes as we grow-up we often think of what we are to them. The self-image our parents give us becomes part of our perceptual field, the colored lenses through which we see reality. We do not see things the way they really are. We see things the way we expect them to be.

We, in many times ought to compare our self-images with what others think of us. What others think is called our "public image". It is the second zone of our personality from the view point of self-knowledge. We are aware that we create a certain impression on other people. They have a picture of our personality that differs from our self-image. Sometimes the difference is slight, sometimes great. One good example is my friend Engr. Lito Lumabas. If for the first time you'll gonna meet this guy, you can easily judge him with his being serious personality as unreachable one, yet, if you'll be given the chance to be with him, I'm quite sure you'll gonna like him by his being down-to-earth person and the most thing you'll gonna miss on him is his being "Kwela" all the time.

We usually accept anything in our public image that agrees with our self-image and discard the rest. We tell ourselves that other people do not understand us or are envious or just do not know enough about us to know what we are like. We try to tell other people they are wrong about us. We want them to accept our self-image as our real self.

But our self-image is not necessary your real-self. As a matter of fact, our public image may be a much better picture of our real self. Perhaps most people fail to grow in self-knowledge,and thus in maturity, because they discredit what other people say about them. What seems to be a casual remark from another person may be a valuable clue to what we are really like. A person can learn about himself by giving thought to such little comments as " you take yourself too seriously," or "You worry to much" etc.. It does not make whether the remark comes from somebody who is pleased with us or from somebody who is mad at us. It may contain more truth than we realize about ourselves.

But our public image does not contain the whole truth about us, and may be distorted like our self-image.Much of our real self remains hidden from both ourselves and others.Our "hidden self" is the third zone of our personality from the view point of self- knowledge. There is much within us- feelings, motives, fears hopes and talents. Each of us remains a mystery. As we reflect on our daily experience of living we come to know more about ourselves all the time, but we never completely solve mystery.

Ikaw kaibigan. Ang tanong ko sa’yo, ANO NGA BA ANG TINGIN MO SA SARILI MO?