the flawed self-narrative (1)
The Mind is the Prison (allegory)
In his empty, uninspired prison cell—a cramped space where an unwelcome cold clashed with the stifling heat outside—the sculptor sat cross-legged. The floor felt uneven beneath him, a reminder of the cell’s pitiless architecture. Now and then, he exhaled into the humid air, and in the slim, stupid light that poured through the narrow window—a brief, trembling exhalation of a man who had long forgotten comfort. Shadows cast by the free world capered along the cavelike walls—a reminder that there was more. This grim sentence was punctuated solely by the regular drip of cold water from the ceiling. A wicked metronome. Maybe the prison itself wished to keep count of his remaining days. Or maybe it was weeping. He closed his eyes and allowed his thoughts to wander into vivid hallucination. In the quiet recesses of his mind, the cell’s oppressive grayness surrendered to a beautiful landscape—a rugged Mediterranean shore, the coarse texture of thirsty, sunbaked stone, olive trees whose leaves danced in a warm, gentle breeze, and the distant greetings of a sea he would never see again. From one prison to another.
A singular scar marred his palm, a souvenir from his first attempt at a sculpture many, many years ago. He felt it, tracing the tightness of scar tissue knit over raw memory. There, at his side, a small figure in a humble, earthen robe appeared—not as a mystical guide, but as someone who had seen enough stuff to know the value of looking at things differently. The eager rays of sun dared not climb beneath her hood. The only promise of a face was her curved jaw, visible just barely. A sudden stir broke the stasis.
"I see you’re troubled," the humble figure said, her tone measured rather than lofty. "I’ve spent years working with stone, too." Her delicate posture did not suggest any immortality. She embodied the very much mortal being of someone who had known labor and toil and the wisdom born only from marble chippings.
"I thought…" The sculptor’s eyelids fluttered open. "I thought every strike of the chisel was my spirit made tangible and touchable. Now…" His voice caught up. "Now…"
The figure nodded. "Look at these stones…" The illusion world parted at her will, revealing once again the drab, eroded texture of the real walls. "...battered and characterized by drips and temperature shifts and other atmospheric conditions. They’ve changed shape from merely existing, not from insight or conscious design. I wonder if your beliefs formed similarly—eroded by the persistent expectations of others around you and of an indifferent society, much like the facets of the walls were adjusted and calibrated and twiddled and tweaked to satisfy the whimsical wishes of the universe."
The sculptor inhaled, closing his eyes once again, now trying to perfect his mental retreat by filtering out the rhythm of the dripping water. "Is it not strange," he began, pushing hair from his forehead with a renewed motive to see again, "that my body can be trapped, yet my mind slips away so easily?" He glanced around, the constancy of the dripping and the texture of the walls against his back threatening to suffocate him once again. Yet, as she spoke, she armed his mind with the brilliance of the sun and he momentarily won the battle between reality and imagination.
The robed woman lowered herself beside him, with the strewn hem of her garment now darkening in the puddle that grew with every drip. In the hushed corners of the sculptor’s mind—the singular place these cell walls could not confine—he felt neither chilled nor overheated. He shut his eyes again. The cell walls gave way completely to a vigorous valley glazed in the glint of brilliant sunlight. Rows of white clay houses wearing shingled crimson roofs sat tightly around the busy town square, where an army of a thousand cobblestones each reflected the glare of Greek midday. The smell of baked bread mingled with the smoke of hearth fires, weaving an atmosphere both optimistic and oppressive. The sculptor's calloused hands, molded, sculpted, and chiseled by years of stonework, trembled.
In the swelling epicenter of the village square stood the whispers of civilization. The voices of the crowd rose and fell and rose once again in tides of conviction. Sunlight flashed against the surface of an ancient stone tablet etched with symbols in a language no one living could decipher. The robed companion’s garments, too, caught the sunlight at odd angles, flickering wildly as though the boundary between cloth and shifting shadows had never been decided. The villagers orbited around the weight of the universal declaration; they all believed, vehemently, these markings on this stone tablet crowned their village as the center of the universe. From an elevated parapet above the lively depressed plaza, the sculptor’s eyes drifted toward the eye of the storm where the villagers orbited faster and more densely, with muted murmurs occasionally spiking into emphatic chants. Drawn by both curiosity and a professional reverence for carved stone, the sculptor threaded through the crowd. His fingertips grazed the intricate grooves of the inscription, and they recognized advanced craftsmanship—flawless incisions and angles and illustrations that, for a moment, spoke of distant wonders. For a moment, the fervor of the onlooking villagers was legitimate. And then it prickled at his senses. Had they really surrendered their autonomy to age-old inscriptions purely because these runes existed? They moved in circles of death like ants. By his side now, the companion watched the villagers’ reverent stares. Old men in crisp tunics muttered confidently about heavenly significance, while women and children danced with wreaths of wildflowers decorating their heads. The companion turned to the assembled villagers.
"If this same tablet," she began, the nonconformity of her tone and posture elevating her voice a few feet, "had been discovered in another town, would that place not also claim the center of the universe?" Immediately, a ripple of tension spread through the congregation. Some glared, hands clenching around cups and woven baskets. Mutterings of indignation synchronized into a collective hiss. An elder, white-haired and stooped, stared on as if this agitator’s words were some foreign, exotic creature.
"Blasphemy!" she spat, knuckles whitening and tightening around a shepherd’s staff. The congregation erupted. Some fisted the air. Some threw their fingers at the sky in rebuttal. Some spread their arms in exasperation, as if to encompass the entire whole wide world in their arms. A few steps away, a timid boy in a simple linen robe grasped the sculptor’s hand with unexpected force. His eyes shone intensely in a fearful awe.
"The elders speak of songs," the young boy whispered. "They tell stories of far places. They tell me about adventures. And they say some people go." Though the villagers’ anger mounted in the background, curiosity lit up within both the sculptor and the companion. “But they return half-mad.” He whispered. “They come back and their eyes are wild and frantic. And they babble about wonders. They say we wouldn’t understand unless we saw them ourselves.” The mood around the stone darkened further. Several villagers advanced with menace in their eyes, fingering makeshift pikes sharpened at both ends, muttering about retribution for defiling their sacred lore. The humid, cheerful air soured with the scent of impending slaughter. Clouds gathered overhead in the unnatural haste of a custodian preparing to mop up blood, roaring thunderously as if to mirror the villagers’ fury. The companion touched the sculptor’s elbow, urging him to withdraw. They darted swiftly through a side lane as market stalls, once brimming with both produce and producer, were hastily abandoned as the people scrambled to ally with the growing crowd or flee the imminent storm.
Lightning traced the horizon with jagged forks piercing the ground so near that the streets trembled beneath their feet. Now rain, too, joined the stir and assaulted the square, drenching the celebratory garlands in grimy puddles. To the villagers, it was clear. The universe did not grant amnesty to sacrilege. Under these dire omens, the sculptor and companion ducked into a narrow passage behind the outer walls of the village, slipping past half-collapsed sheds and timeworn arches. Ancient olive groves and vineyards stretched beyond, with their trees now bent low as if in submission to the terror of the heavens. Whatever calm had existed in that beautiful golden valley now vanished. Livestock bellowed in confusion and birds took frantic flight, disappearing into the slate sky. The companion, hood pressed over brow, pressed on with a resolute stride—though she spoke little, every sideways glance she offered seemed to convey that they had triggered an ancient tripwire by questioning this village’s unquestionable belief.
At last, they reached the outer fringes of the settlement where one final row of vineyard gave way to the open countryside. The outburst of thunder, too, gave way to a resonant rumble rolling into the distance. The air defiantly remained charged—a loaded gun waiting for the next outburst. Mud clung to the sculptor’s sandals and the companion’s cloak dripped in an all-too-familiar steady rhythm. And they could both feel ten thousand unseen eyes glaring from behind shuttered windows and distant hills and closed gates. A broken signpost leaned cautiously at the mouth of the foreboding forest ahead. Gnarled trunks and twisted branches weaved themselves into a canopy that, apparently, devoured all light. Myths spoke of restless spirits lurking in its depths, a place travelers had long learned to bypass lest they, too, vanish into legend. In the dreary hush that followed the storm, the dripping leaves also seemed to speak.
"Sometimes, truth must be pursued where it’s least welcome," the companion murmured, her voice remaining unwavering.
"You’re sure of this way?" the sculptor asked, glancing at her.
"I’m sure."
essay
I. Reconsidering Our Place
“Man is the measure of all things.”
The astronomical model of Geocentrism places Earth at the universe’s center. It describes all other planets as orbiting the Earth and was prevalent among many historical civilizations for much of human history. We know it’s not true now, but how could we, looking up, perceive anything other than a universe built around us? We inherited our own planet. Were we not also born to inherit the stars?
This misjudged line of reasoning is based fundamentally in the fact that, until we started questioning the unquestionable, we were blinded by a false predisposition to view ourselves as the center of everything. We abandoned this belief upon adopting the Sun’s perspective. That made things neat. Orbits became elliptical rather than epicyclical. Planets didn’t suddenly change direction and move backwards during certain times of the year. And suppose our home planet was Mars instead? Would we have falsely assumed Mars was the center of the universe? After all, every planet views her universe differently. Just as we misjudged our position in the heavens, we’re inclined to see ourselves as the center of our own personal universes. The anthropic principle—the proposition that our observations of the universe are inevitably shaped by the fact that we exist to observe it—still has validity in the sense that we are correct in seeing the world with the context that it necessarily contains the conditions for conscious observation. In other words, our universes were made for us, but they weren’t made for us. This adds some tension between the humility of knowing that we aren’t the center of the universe and the subtle privilege of the simple fact that the universe can be observed because it happened to allow for observers. To move away from cosmology, this “observer-bias” perspective is a counterbalance to egocentrism. Just as we need to consistently question the apparently self-evident idea of our own centrality, we need to ponder the possibility that we assume our personal experiences or beliefs stand at the center of truth.
II. Dasein is a River
“The eyes see only what the mind is prepared to comprehend.”
Who do you see in the mirror? Do you recognize your own face or do you merely see the person staring back at you? We’ve been conditioned to see ourselves from a singular lens that has been shaped carefully (or not) by the silent optician we call our past. He cares only for our own habits, experiences, and also the expectations we hold ourselves to. In a sense, we are all storytellers. In our own stories, we are our own protagonists and our own antagonists. Egocentric thinking centers the world about the self. This is a natural inclination, yes, but it’s an inherent flaw in our perceptions of ourselves and others. Our sense of self, a meticulously constructed narrative, leads us to believe we know who we are when, really, we have only scratched the surface.
Critical introspection, however, has the potential to serve as our greatest champion against this self-centered view of the world. Introspection is the examination of one’s own psyche and emotions, and it entails, among other things, fostering a better understanding of oneself, which itself entails understanding yourself according to how you are seen by everyone, not just yourself. Introspection is the act of looking at the mirror that reflects your mind. You’ve examined your mind during instances of self-awareness while taking long showers, in the early hours of a weekday morning, during a walk, or whenever you’ve had the chance to converse with your own thoughts. Stop polishing your mirror—it isn’t and never will be perfect. Examine its cracks and stains. Before examining them, you need to acknowledge them to begin with. And it’s uncomfortable to do so. We want to believe we’re in control of who we are, but introspection reveals that that is merely an illusion. Much of what we think defines us as people is shaped by forces outside of our control or even our awareness—the expectations of society, of our family, our prejudices, past traumas, unconscious biases. We may be at the mast, but it is really the wind that decides whether our ship moves or not. We are at the whim of an indifferent storm that decides whether we are to sink or swim.
Existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger’s notion of Dasein refers to the uniquely human way of existing in the world. Instead of imagining ourselves as isolated points floating independently and observing an externalized reality, Heidegger emphasizes that our nature is inherently inseparable from the social, historical, and cultural contexts in which we find ourselves. Being-in-the-world means we don’t simply stand over and against a separate world. Rather, the world forms the horizon of all our thoughts, choices, and self-understanding. We are thrown into circumstances not necessarily of our own choosing (being born in a specific circumstance). This “thrownness” or Geworfenheit, is an intrinsic part of what shapes our frontier of possibility. Rather than being entirely self-made, we inherit backgrounds that influence who we are and also how we see ourselves and the world we occupy. So, authenticity refers to being able to live in a way that acknowledges our thrownness while also taking responsibility for choosing and enacting possibilities. Inauthenticity manifests when we lazily adopt roles or identities without examining if they reflect our inner potential in favor of conforming to societal expectations.
In this line of reasoning, we can’t see beyond our own noses partly because we are always engaged in a shared world where we’ve inherited our languages, norms, and practices that naturally shape what we notice and how we interpret it (e.g., if you think in a specific language, your thoughts may necessarily be limited by the limitations of that language). There is no neutral or universal introspection. We may falsely believe we’re forming purely internal judgments, but in reality, the categories we use to judge ourselves are externally derived. Rather than strive for a “more” universal view, one must acknowledge that we necessarily cannot stand outside our own worldly conditions. Instead, strive to recognize those conditions explicitly and observe how they shape our self-reflections.
III. What if We’re Wrong?
“Narcissus never wrote well nor was a friend.”
Confirmation bias is the tendency for the mind to only seek and accept information that aligns with its own pre-existing expectations or beliefs. We ignore information that challenges us, and this applies to the nature of introspection as well. We’re not being honest with ourselves if we look inward only to confirm what we already believe about ourselves. True introspection requires true metacognition—the scrutiny not only of our conclusions but also the processes by which we reach them. We, as humans, resort to confirmation bias because it’s just more cognitively efficient to do so. Why must we bother ourselves with challenging ideas—ideas that may overrun deeply entrenched, long-time memories and beliefs—when we could just filter out all the unnecessary stuff? As you look inwards thinking that you are in search of truths about yourself, when, really, you’re only seeking validation, it feels as though you’re more self-aware than before, when, in reality, you're only strengthening pre-existing narratives about yourself. That is the most dangerous part. We must be able to open our eyes and ears and hearts and minds to inharmonious or even incompatible ideas, however uncomfortable it may be to do so. Question your own beliefs. One should take up the task with buoyancy and a free-thinking flexibility. Be open-minded but not totally malleable. It doesn’t matter how well or how long you’re looking at yourself in the mirror if you end up being ignorant of the world because of it. Introspective explorations of oneself can lead to reinforcing egocentric views and blinding us to uncomfortable yet necessary truths. Radical skepticism must aim to question the deepest foundations of what can be known. Historically, René Descartes’s “evil demon” scenario or more modern thought experiments like the idea of the “brain in a vat” challenge whether we can even trust any of our own perceptions or beliefs. And really, we can’t. There is always a chance that our entire worldview might be misleading. And in that case, how can we live meaningfully?
Furthermore, introspection is necessarily constrained by our present moment. The nature of temporal experience births the tragedy that, in observing our true selves, we are only seeing a snapshot that’s already gone. Our life stories are shaped by how we piece together fleeting “nows.” Correct introspection recognizes that our sense of continuity across time is a story we weave with our own hands.
IV. Measuring Up or Missing Out?
Humans are remarkable animals. Many of the small things we take for granted are absurdly successful adaptations from an evolutionary standpoint. To throw, to sweat, to walk, to thumb, to think. We’ve adapted in so many big and little ways, and perhaps the most crucial adaptation is the ability to function as social animals. So much of our survival as a species early on in our development depended on being able to operate in small tribes and communities. It’s instinctual for us to look around us and assess how we fit in our communities based on others. It was critical to be able to compare yourself to others to ensure you fit well with the group in order to secure your own survival. Today, social comparison is hopefully not a matter of survival for most people. Instead, it’s a means of measuring our success, attractiveness, intelligence, or self-worth based on arbitrary external standards determined by cultural influences. And while it’s still useful to know where you stand relative to those around you, the drive to compare oneself to others is fundamentally based in insecurity—the innate fear of falling behind or not measuring up to those around us. Left unchecked, this instinct leads us to believe that we must prove our worth to others, to seek validation externally rather than internally. We should be motivated independently rather than by the drive to match or outdo others. We must put our faith and trust in our own growth. Compete against yesterday’s you. Benchmark against yourself. Ask: "How far have I come? In what ways have I grown?" External comparisons should only be used to draw insights and to push oneself to learn from the mistakes and successes of others—a vector for personal growth, not a source of insecurity.
We’re wired to notice what’s going wrong or where we’re lacking more than what’s going right. Our attention naturally gravitates toward threats and deficiencies—another survival mechanism. But negativity bias, in our modern world, can inflate our insecurities and keep us locked into counterproductive comparisons. It’s not that we want to ignore challenges, it’s that we need to balance how we view our failings and our successes. Acknowledge the good in your life. Gratitude journaling or even just quick mental reviews of things that went well today or things that you’ve improved in or are proud of can take you far. Set social boundaries for yourself, especially digitally. On a more practical and less philosophical note, social media is notorious for amplifying feelings of inadequacy. Limit how often you check social channels, prune the accounts you follow to focus on those that inspire you rather than pressure you. If someone’s content consistently makes you feel anxious or behind, then it’s probably time to block or unfollow. And instead of envying what someone else has, flip the script; commend them (at least mentally) for their achievements and acknowledge that their successes, in no way, diminishes your own potential. If appropriate, ask them how they got there. Then, you’re drawing actionable tips to move forward yourself. And above all, be mindful of the fact that you’re sliding into comparison territory whenever that happens. Pause. Take a breath, recognize that you’re drawing comparisons again, and move forward.
V. When Identity Limits Us
We tend to define ourselves as people based on how well we fit into singular categories—certain traits, achievements, or roles we seek to identify with. We become attached to specific ideas of ourselves and we begin to admire ourselves. We treat these traits as permanent, inalienable parts of ourselves. We say: I am a leader. I am the responsible one. I am the creative one. I am the smart one.
Certainty over our identities, in a way, is a good thing. To be uncertain is to be bound between two opposing views of oneself—and yet it is something one must learn to embrace. These self-assumed identities limit us. By clinging to fixed identities, we lose sight of the fact that we are dynamic beings with the half-freedom, half-burden of being able to redefine ourselves. In our world, in labeling myself “the creative one,” I may foreclose other possibilities like being scientific, analytical, or detail-oriented. As Dasein, we can choose to expand or revise our self-conceptions. Ask: Who are you? Upon what do you pride yourself? When we fixate on one part of who we are, we assess our value as people by how well we maintain that concept of ourselves. A "smart" student will naturally be more distraught over a bad grade than a student who doesn’t consider himself smart. The one who considers himself successful fears failure. The one who considers himself hard-working fears laziness. The one who prides himself on being independent hesitates to ask for help. If you consider yourself smart, you may be more inclined to judge people on the basis of intelligence because that’s how you judge yourself. And we are complex, evolving creatures; it doesn’t make sense to assume fixed positions on ourselves.
The ego tends to see change as a threat. It prefers certainty over growth—constancy over progress. You preconsciously rationalize, justify, and then dismiss anything that challenges the existing narrative you have about yourself. If we see ourselves as disciplined, we may downplay periods of laziness. If we see ourselves as kind people, we may excuse moments of selfishness. If we build ourselves around the belief that we’re intelligent, we avoid situations that make us feel ignorant. And there’s a certain comfort in having a solid and unchanging identity. Why venture into the jungle? Our identities are meant to be as pliable and plastic as clay; if we decide to harden them, they become brittle and fragile. Does the caterpillar—whose destiny is to be a butterfly—stay in her cocoon merely because she fears the outside world? Because she values the warmth and comfort of remaining still? She sleeps serenely, yes, but in the same way that a corpse sleeps serenely. Circumstances can change, and if you don’t change with them, you risk losing sight of your worth. And what if you fail? Your worth as a person was dictated by your capacity to succeed. So are you now worthless? The idea of letting go of self-fixation doesn’t mean abandoning who you are—it just means making more space for growth. It’ll be difficult to accept that your idea of your identity may be a misrepresentation of who you really are. And you are not an exception. The true nature of introspection demands that you’re accepting of the fact that there are valid ideas that may challenge your own ideas or identity. Many of the labels we self-adopt come from our environments—environments we’re thrown into before we’re ever fully conscious of their effect on us. Just like how the walls define the identity of a blank room, you must ask yourself which aspects of you you cling on to the most. We build our self-worth around inherited conceptions, ignoring the possibility that they may be incomplete or ill-suited. Finally, recognizing how our identities are functions of a certain time, place, and nurture can loosen their grips on us.
VI. Incomplete Narratives
“As for me, all I know is that I know nothing.”
We build worlds. We build identities of ourselves that feel certain, that feel cohesive, that make us feel good. But true introspection offers to reveal how flawed our perceptions of ourselves can be. It offers you the opportunity to look beyond the stone tablet. Egocentrism convinces us that not only do we understand ourselves fully, but we are in full control of our own identity. Social comparisons distort progress. Confirmation bias reinforces comfortable—though unhelpful—and incomplete narratives about ourselves. The key isn’t to find any fixed answer to who we are, but to embrace the ultimate fact that we are always changing and that we are always potentially wrong. We are dynamic beings. The introspective person doesn’t concern himself or herself with proving anything to anyone. Real introspection demands the constant process of questioning, evolving, and embracing uncertainty. It demands the acceptance that the self is never a finished product—always only a “becoming” rather than a “being.” Inflexibility shackles us.
