Do you know yourself - the good, the bad and the ugly?
What is in your heart?

From the song 'I'm A Bitch I'm A Lover' by Alanis Morissette:

I'm a bitch, I'm a lover, I'm a child, I'm a mother,
I'm a sinner, I'm a saint, I do not feel ashamed.
I'm your hell, I'm your dream, I'm nothing in between,
You know you wouldn't want it any other way.

https://youtu.be/_ivt_N2Zcts

"The way you get to know yourself is by the expressions on other people's faces, because that's the only thing that you can see, unless you carry a mirror about."
- Gil Scott-Heron

"Only as you do know yourself can your brain serve you as a sharp and efficient tool. Know your own failings, passions, and prejudices so you can separate them from what you see."
- Bernard Baruch

"[Figure] out for yourselves what makes you happy, no matter how crazy it may sound to other people. I was lucky growing up because I did not have television or didn't have telephones, I didn't have the computers and the iPods. And, of course, Twitter was then something that birds did outside the window. I didn't have all these distractions and all this. I spent a lot of time by myself, so I could figure out and listen to what is inside my heart and inside my head."
- Arnold Schwarzenegger, Commencement Address, University of Southern California, 2009
http://www.graduationwisdom.com/speeches/0067-schwarzenegger.htm

"Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes."
- Carl Jung

"A human being has so many skins inside, covering the depths of the heart. We know so many things, but we don't know ourselves! Why, thirty or forty skins or hides, as thick and hard as an ox's or bear's, cover the soul. Go into your own ground and learn to know yourself there."
- Meister Eckhart

"You never know yourself till you know more than your body."
- Thomas Traherne

MainMessageForToday
Know yourself. Know more than your body. Know what is in your heart, know your true colors, know what others truly think of you.

From the song 'I'm Coming Out' by Diana Ross:

I'm coming out, I want the world to know,
Got to let it show,
I'm coming out.

https://youtu.be/QoRBFNOgeHw

"All men should strive to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why."
- James Thurber

"Knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom."
- Aristotle

"The most difficult thing in life is to know yourself."
- Thales

"You can live a lifetime and, at the end of it, know more about other people than you know about yourself."
- Beryl Markham

"There are three things extremely hard: steel, a diamond, and to know one’s self."
– Benjamin Franklin

MainMessageForToday
A person  should know his or her strengths, weaknesses/shortcomings and other important things about themselves. I suspect that most people know a lot about themselves but pretend not to or conceal who they are.

From the song 'Who I Am' by Jessica Andrews:

I am Rosemary's granddaughter,
The spitting image of my father,
And when the day is done my momma's still my biggest fan.
Sometimes I'm clueless and I'm clumsy,
But I've got friends that love me,
And they know just where I stand.
It's all a part of me,
And that's who I am.

http://youtu.be/Jd9zYKLepCw

"Find yourself, says this world.
But I don’t think that’s really the way it works.
Finding yourself sounds like 'you' are out there that knowing who you are is a process of going.
Yet it seems in so many ways that it’s really more about staying.
Staying true to who you are…even when the popular kids make fun of you.
Staying courageous enough to say “yes” to what God asks…even if you’re scared silly.
Staying open to life and love…even when hard times make you want to slam the door of your heart.
It’s the staying that makes us.
And it’s the staying that leads, in the end, to the finding.
The knowing.
Who we are.
What we’re called to do.
To looking in the mirror and seeing a woman who is learning to be who she is smiling back–at least on more days than ever before.
We don’t have to find ourselves, sisters.
We simply have to come home to who we already are…"
- Holley Gerth
http://www.incourage.me/2011/07/what-finding-yourself-really-means.html

"To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment."

- Ralph Waldo Emerson 

"To be nobody but yourself in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else means to fight the hardest battle which any human being can fight; and never stop fighting."
- E. E. Cummings

"It's definitely difficult being a woman and growing up a girl. When you're graceful, people say you lack personality; when you're serene, people say you're boring; when you're confident, people say you're arrogant; when you're feminine, people say you're too girly; and when you climb trees, people say you're too much of a tomboy! As a woman, you really need to develop a very strong sense of self and the earlier you can do that, the better! You have to be all the things that you are, without allowing other people's ignorance to change you! I realized that they don't know what grace is, they can't identify serenity, they have inferiority complexes, they are incapable of being feminine, and they don't know how to climb trees!"
― C. JoyBell C.

MainMessageForToday
Through criticism, the world tries to change us, to make us conform to its image.

Theme for the week 4/17 - 4/23: Know Yourself, which follows last week's theme Criticism.