Related Wisdom

Three passages I recently stumbled upon that address self-knowledge, in varied and fascinating ways:

Habits of the Heart: Individualism and Commitment in America, Robert Bellah:

"Those most trapped in the language of the isolated self ('In the end you’re really alone') are troubled by the nihilism they sense there and are eager to find a way of overcoming the emptiness of purely arbitrary 'values.' We believe that much of the thinking about the self of educated Americans, thinking that has become almost hegemonic in our universities and much of the middle class, is based on inadequate social science, impoverished philosophy and vacuous theology. There are truths we do not see when we adopt the language of radical individualism. We find ourselves not independently of other people and institutions but through them. We never get to the bottom of ourselves on our own. We discover who we are face to face and side by side with others in work, love, and learning…We are parts of a larger whole than we can neither forget nor imagine in our own image without paying a high price.”

Anne of Windy Poplars, LM Montgomery (Yes...this is a longstanding favorite; I re-read the entire series at sporadic intervals.)

Excerpt from a letter in which Anne describes her introduction to a little girl named Elizabeth:

"'And this is Elizabeth?' I said.

"'Not tonight,' she answered gravely. 'This is my night for being Betty because I love everything in the world tonight. I was Elizabeth last night and tomorrow night I'll prob'ly be Beth. It all depends on how I feel.'

"There was the touch of the kindred spirit for you. I thrilled to it at once.

"'How very nice to have a name you can change so easily and still feel it's your own.'

"Little Elizabeth nodded.

"'I can make so many names out of it. Elsie and Betty and Bess and Elisa and Lisbeth and Beth . . . but not Lizzie. I never can feel like Lizzie.'

"When she is Betty she makes faces at her grandmother her back; but when she turns into Elsie she is sorry for it and thinks she ought to confess, but is scared to. Very rarely she is Elizabeth and then she has the face of one who listens to fairy music and knows what roses and clovers talk about. She's the quaintest thing…”

The Four Loves, CS Lewis:

“Lamb says somewhere that if, of three friends, (A, B, and C), A should die, then B loses not only A but ‘A’s part in B.’ In each of my friends there is something that only some other friend can only bring out. By myself I am not large enough to call the whole man into activity; I want other lights than my own to show all his facets. Now that Charles is dead, I shall never see Ronald’s reaction to a specifically Caroline joke. Far from having more of Ronald, having him ‘to myself’ now that Charles is away, I have less of Ronald.”