Self-Revelation.  It’s so often touted as this really great thing—to have an awareness of oneself.  I don’t get it.  So I’m supposed to be enthused when I recognize something in myself?  Like this somehow is a great mark of refinement and evolution.  Not so.  After getting dressed this morning, I looked at myself with disappointment. Self revelatory moment number one: I thought I looked fat. I went to ask my father in hopes that he would assuage my feelings of inadequacy.  Instead, he said, “oh, it’s probably just your shirt.  It looks a little tight on you but you’re not fat”.  This is the answer that he’s supposed to give, right? Right.  But it didn’t make me feel any better because, self revelatory moment number two: I was asking the “Am I fat” question.  This is the question that I mocked so many other women for asking.  It occurred to me that I was becoming one of them—another silly woman.  Not a good feeling.  In fact, it further increased my feeling of inadequacy.  Self-Revelation. Ha! What a load of garbage.  Do you know what I’ve discovered about self revelation? After we have these “aha” moments, we are supposed to do something in reaction.  We are expected to change.  But when I have these moments, I don’t. Like recently, when I realized that I keep a lot of secrets.  Good friends tell other friends what they are going through, when they are going through it.  I don’t. I like to figure things out for myself.  The only time I ever mention a private matter to a friend is when I’m sure that the situation is nearly at its close.  That’s not very friendly.  I wait to get an opinion when I know that there is nothing else to be done, you know, as a stop gap measure.  What kind of a person does that? Especially when so many of my friends come to me for good advice.  I recognize this in myself and yet, do I change?  NEVER! I persist in keeping secrets. That’s not very evolved of me. See, this self-revelation junk just makes me depressed.

Today’s Task: Try to use the act of self-revelation for its purpose: a means to change.  When you see something in yourself that you don’t like, work on it instead of using it as a crutch. Can you imagine if everyone in the world did that after every moment of self-revelation?  We’d all be much better off because we’d be constantly evolving toward something greater—civil and decent humanity. I like that idea a little better than wallowing in my own sense of shame at being stagnant as a person.