The Depths of Self-Awareness ($)

All of your problems reflect absent self-awareness, just as your successes are the result of it.

“The second you think that all your good fortune is a product of your virtue, you become highly judgmental, lacking empathy, totally without self-awareness, arrogant, stupid - I mean, all the stuff that our ruling class is.”
— Tucker Carlson

Over the Horizon

Self-awareness is one of those high-level ideas that has something to do with everything but, because it’s so broad, it doesn’t grab our attention. Something like the horizon, which is essential to balance and orientation, is always there somewhere, and seems rarely worth noticing.

There are extremes of awareness we consider fearful, stern, or awesome. The frightening claustrophobia of being deprived of awareness, to be a vegetable. The stern warning to look both ways before crossing the street. Or the awesome prospect of enlightened, universal awareness. But drama aside, we don’t really care.

We’re overlooking a valuable topic. Awareness is not just a topic for stoned conversations, but an actual thing that we can pick up and move forward. Or, if not move forward, then it’s a sufficiently bright horizon that we can see it through the transparency of all our daily realities.

Self-Awareness is as Overlooked As the Air We Breath

Unlike energy, of which there is one kind that’s required for everything, all things require different awarenesses. You can’t do anything without energy, but you can do anything without awareness. Most of what we do is done without awareness and we generally don’t notice.

There is a physical law that says systems proceed in ways that use the least energy. It’s called the principle of least action. Similarly, most of our behavior reflects a desire to accomplish the most with the least awareness. We could call it, “The Principle of Least Awareness.”

We can’t be aware of everything. We have to be selective. The Principle of Least Awareness ensures that we’re always holding as much awareness as possible in reserve. That way, when something really important happens, we’re not gobsmacked, we’re ready for it. 

While it’s good to always be ready, the undesirable result is that we perform poorly. In fact, we have a cultural meme of the over-present person, the mover and shaker who stirs things up. That’s the image and we endorse it, but we rarely do it. There are no statues of famous couch potatoes but, to be honest, few of us hold our feet to the fire.

Higher Standards

Most of the problems my clients bring to me would be solved if they had been more aware. The problems they now bring relate to issues they’ve long overlooked. Nobody’s perfect, but that’s not really an excuse for why you’re suffering now. Had you known you’d be in this situation, you probably would have paid more attention in the past. But you didn’t know, and you didn’t train your skills, and now, like a vestigial organ, the particular awareness that you need has either atrophied or never developed at all.

It helps to blame other people. It may not be reasonable, but you’ve got to start somewhere, and blaming yourself is depressing. We see ourselves in our reflection in the world, and the people we failed to consider and who now bother us simply reflect the awareness we didn’t develop.

Some of my clients may not have been up to the task. I think of them as disabled. If they weren’t disabled before, they are now. I try to turn their attention to aspects of their realities that they’ve overlooked. Some of this is common sense, like stop getting angry with other people for their idiocy. Some of it is emotional regulation pertaining to events that trigger them and send them yet again around a circular canyon with no visible horizon, only to return to where they started.

My clients seem like unusually smart people. This has allowed me to revise an early prejudice that it’s the weaker people who seek counseling. From what I see, it’s the stronger ones. The ones who are aware of their rut, their blindness, and the energy it’s going to take to do something about it. I don’t know for sure, but if they accept my perspective, then I’ll think they’re smart.

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