You can spend years living with a habit, explaining it to other people and even defending it, without ever really understanding why you do it. After a while, the explanation becomes so familiar that you stop questioning it. I think that’s one of the difficulties of knowing yourself. We can become so accustomed to our own behavior that we stop noticing what might be behind it.
Seneca once wrote about a woman named Harpaste who lived in his household. She had suddenly lost her sight, but according to Seneca, she had no idea it had happened. She kept asking her attendant to move her to another room because the one she was in was too dark. Wherever she went, she encountered the same problem, and each time she assumed there was something wrong with the room.
Seneca wasn’t particularly kind in the way he described her, but he soon turned the attention toward himself and his reader. He observed that we often behave in much the same way. We blame our circumstances for problems that follow us wherever we go. We convince ourselves that our difficulties come from where we live, the people around us, or the demands of our work, without considering whether something in our own behavior might be contributing to them.
Of course, sometimes our circumstances really are the problem. But when the same difficulties keep returning, even as our circumstances change, it’s worth asking what we might be bringing with us.
For years, I told myself I worked best under pressure. And to be fair, I often did. I got through my assignments and exams by leaving things until the last minute, so I saw little reason to change. Then several deadlines came at once, and suddenly the approach I’d relied on was putting my studies at risk. I’ve been making an effort to start earlier ever since, and it’s something I still work on. I still work well under pressure, but I’ve realized that’s a poor reason to keep creating it.
Looking back, it’s strange how little I questioned the habit. I had an explanation that made sense to me, and for a long time, that was enough.
I wonder whether there’s something in your own life you’ve accepted in much the same way. A habit you’ve come to consider part of your personality, or a problem you’ve explained so many times that you no longer think to question the explanation itself.
And that creates a difficult problem. If the explanations we give ourselves are sometimes part of what keeps a habit alive, how can we trust those same explanations to help us understand it?
Seneca explored that difficulty through another image, this time involving sleep and dreams. I think it offers a useful way to understand why some of our deepest patterns remain hidden, even when we sincerely want to know ourselves better.
Continue reading to discover how to recognize the hidden patterns shaping your life and understand yourself better.
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