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March 7th

DON’T TRUST THE SENSES

“Heraclitus called self-deception an awful disease and eyesight a

lying sense.”

—DIOGENES LAERTIUS, LIVES OF THE EMINENT PHILOSOPHERS, 9.7

elf-awareness is the ability to objectively evaluate the self. It’s the
ability to question our own instincts, patterns, and assumptions. Oiêsis,
self-deception or arrogant and unchallenged opinion, requires that we hold
all our opinions up to hard scrutiny; even our eyes deceive us.
On the one hand, that’s alarming. I can’t even trust my own senses?!
Sure, you could think about it that way. Or you could take it another way:
because our senses are often wrong, our emotions overly alarmed, our
projections overly optimistic, we’re better off not rushing into conclusions
about anything. We can take a beat with everything we do and become
aware of everything that’s going on so we can make the right decision.