Considering the Long-term Utility of Self-reflection

 I write this section at a point in my journey of writing this work, in which I find it tough, or at minimum, not immediately obvious what the fate of my future self-reflections should and would be. Among my goals when beginning these self-reflections was the desire to become a better person than the day I was before.

Now, the topics of my writing till this point has been, for the most part, scattered--I would write one section each day, and each section would have a topic distinct from the last. Given the diversity of these topics, ranging from discipline to emotions such as guilt and anger, I hesitate as to whether my daily routine and the new experiences I gain between writing sessions would be enough to sustain the unique writing pattern that I have been following until now. After all, it seems unlikely that I can daily depend on a stroke of insight, or source of self-repleneshing new ideas upon which I can write.

I feel that in order to draw general conclusions, and to establish general truths by following my experiences, the quality of writing and the establishment of useful, novel, and well-established claims necessitates meditation upon the incidents and thought patterns that lead to their establishment, and their meaningfulness requires that they are well thought out.

While I do think it possible to continue generating and writing upon new ideas, I wonder whether it would be more advantageous to revisit the several sections already written, and to build upon them, to relate them to new experiences in my life, to question them, to make them more robust. Further, I think that revisiting old thoughts, from which a span of approximately a month has elapsed, would give me a chance to relate the experiences I drew each day to my relatively fresher experiences, as well as to remind myself of my past thoughts and experiences, not only the experiences and stories explicitly expressed in writing, but also those communicated through the choice of words, focus of paragraphs, establishment of goals, and tone of writing. Such factors would enable me to observe discrepancy or wandering of my conclusions about life, as well as to understand patterns in my behavior and thought process.

At this point in my self-reflecting journey, I feel that my own rules and conclusions I can lay down for my own life are limited, and that I must rely upon wisdom from others, to supplement and guide my own thoughts. I’ve begun reading more lately, and am excited to learn from others’ stories and conclusions, such as those of Dr. Peterson, in his 12 Rules for Life book. I look forward to understanding his experiences and years of wisdom and devotion to understanding life and human nature, distilled into so few maxims.

To conclude this metacritical section of this work, I shall cite a relatively recent event in my life, from only yesterday, that has provoked me to evaluate the consistency, and accuracy of past thoughts and conclusions. The incident was a rather unpleasant one, and was one in which I was scolded by my dad twice in the span of one day--once for opening his closed bedroom door, and twice for spending an extended period of time on call with my friend.

As my dad shared with me today, these incidents were not so much caused by my own wrongdoing so much as his cranky mood. Nevertheless, I recall writing about experiencing such emotions of embarrassment or shame, and how punishment, in such forms, teaches us to avoid patterns of behavior that lead to our punishment. Though I cannot be certain of it, I have a feeling that my premeditation upon these ideas, the prior anticipation of future punishment, I had during my writings shaped my responses to them, such as my responses to the events yesterday. I perceive this to be one such example of how my self-reflections have influenced me. I ultimately hope to reach a point where I have formed robust points and conclusions about myself and about life, and also to hold these conclusions close to my heart.