Nelson Mandela: “As I have said, the first thing is to be honest with yourself. You can never have an impact on society if you have not changed yourself…Great peacemakers are all people of integrity, of honesty, and humility.”
They say you know you’ve found your passion when all of the sudden life events seem to fit together like a puzzle and it all finally makes sense.
Or maybe (just maybe) you backwards rationalize and come to that conclusion yourself. Whichever it is, I am formally declaring that I have found mine. That passion is making self-awareness recognized and treated as a skill that is as important as STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) skills or any other taught in formal education systems, the workplace and society in general. Almost in a chicken-and-egg like manner, it took a level of self-awareness for me to realize this passion.
The way I finally came to this realization was through spending a few years exploring what social issues I may be passionate about enough to dedicate my life to. At first I thought it was health, and then education. After 5 or 6 years of (hellish) pre-med schooling and a few years of teaching abroad, I found it disingenuous to fight for any of those specific causes because I see all social issues (lack of access to healthcare, education, food, water, etc.) as manifestations of the symptoms of much bigger problems.
The underlying causes of such devastating realities in today’s world are not being given the attention they deserve and much like our approach to healthcare, we are treating symptoms instead of addressing root causes (e.g. weight loss pills to replace lifestyle changes in diet/exercise). While I don’t claim to know all the causes of these incredibly complex issues (nor do I claim there are only one or two), I am confident that an important one is a lack of self-awareness. This is especially relevant for those in power positions who possess the ability to bring about change.
While not static and only one of many ways to do so, I like to define self-awareness as an understanding of our internal drivers (motivations, values, emotions, rationales, thoughts, etc.) and how those things manifest in our everyday lives- in other words, how we make decisions, construct thoughts, and ultimately, interact with others based on those. While I generally stay away from the term, some may think of this as a heightened level of “consciousness.” Active self-awareness is an intentional, daily effort to stay plugged into what I described above for self, and not assume it is present for all those we interact with.
If we go back to the premise that the lack of this skill garners some of the very behaviors and actions that enable (through apathy, for example) or worsen social issues, we need to consider how this may have a systematic impact. A way to think about this is to consider that systems are made up of and run by people–or groups of individuals. A component of self-awareness is understanding this seemingly basic fact and recognizing that each individual comes with their own internal drivers which often unknowingly impact these systems of class, race, gender, power, economics etc., which collectively make up the society we live in.
Understanding that gaining self-awareness is a journey and not a destination, I am a firm believer that it can be developed by most, if not all, individuals who recognize the need to.
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