Unfinished

"But there is also a merely morbid and fidgety curiosity about one's self-- the slop-over from modern psychology-- which surely does no good. The unfinished picture would so like to jump off the easel and have a look at itself! And analysis doesn't cure that." - C. S. Lewis, from Letters to Malcolm

Oh, but how I live for introspection. And that "slop-over from modern psychology" so approves-- why don't you take a seat, stay a while, try to figure yourself out? Painstakingly explicate your every motive? It truly is "morbid and fidgety," a decidedly unhealthy interest, and while it seems to yield what may appear to be promising results, I have not often found them to be lasting ones.

Then that pivotal second sentence declares us unfinished-- and a very prim and irritating corner of my mind takes umbrage ("Unfinished! Why, how dare he!"). But the smaller, sadder, humbler part knows my unfinishedness, and instead of responding, offended, with denial, it accepts the fact that I am unfinished with relief and thanksgiving. This passage reminds me how wrong extreme introspection actually is in the road toward self-knowledge; I now wonder if an effort toward better understanding others is the much more useful and mature route (and "others" here includes God. Who is more Other than he?). I very much want to "jump off of the easel," but I strongly suspect that my first few brush strokes are hardly even dry.

"For what I call 'myself' (for all practical, everyday purposes) is also a dramatic construction; memories, glimpses in the shaving glass, and snatches of the very fallible activity called 'introspection' are the principal ingredients." - C. S. Lewis, from Letters to Malcolm