Knowing yourself sounds like a good idea, but it can be hard to see quite why it should matter so much. There are some clues in an old story about a lion with a sore paw, a traditional folktale known as Androcles and the Lion. The earliest version of the story comes from the ancient Roman philosopher Aulus Gellius and has been adapted and retold ever since.
One version goes like this. Once, long ago, there was a Barbary lion, nine feet long. with a splendid dark mane, who lived in the forested foothills of the Atlas Mountains, in what is today Algeria. Usually, the lion kept far from human settlements.
But one year, in spring, he started approaching the villages at night, roaring and snarling menacingly in the dark. The villagers were terrified. They put extra guards on the gates and sent out heavily armed hunting parties to try to kill him. It happened around this time that a shepherd boy named Followed his sheep far into the high mountain pastures one cold evening.
He sought shelter in a cave He had just lit a candle and was setting his blanket on the ground when to his horror He saw the ferocious beasts staring at him at first He was terrified the lion looked as if it might be about to pounce on him and rip him to pieces But Androcles noticed something there was a thorn Deeply embedded in one of the lion's front paws and a huge tear was running down his noble face the creature wasn't murderous. It was in agony. So, instead of trying to flee or defend himself with his dagger, the boy's fear changed to pity.
Androcles approached the lion, stroked his mane, and then gently and reassuringly extracted the thorn from the paw and wrapped it in a strip of cloth torn from his own blanket. The lion licked the boy's hand and became his friend. Many years later, Androcles got into trouble with the authorities.
He was shipped to Rome, taken to the Colosseum, and thrown before a lion. to be devoured in public for the pleasure of the people and the emperor but when the lion saw androcles he became quiet and went forward and lowered his head in a bow it was the same barbary lion androcles had taken pity on as a boy the emperor pardoned androcles and he and his lion lived together in rome and they used to go for walks together through the streets with the lion peaceable and contented led only on a slender leash the fable can usefully be read as an allegory about self-knowledge the lion is in terrible pain but has no capacity to understand what is hurting him exactly and how he might put it right in his blind distress he acts in horrifically aggressive and threatening ways he makes blood-curdling noises and frightens everyone the lion is all of us when we lack insight into our own distress the thorn is a troubling maddening element of our inner lives a fear a biting worry a regret a sense of guilt a feeling of humiliation, a strained hope or agonized disappointment that rumbles away powerfully but just out of range of our standard view of ourselves. But there's potentially another Androcles-like side of us, able calmly to see past the fury to what the problem really is, and then calm our untargeted anger and help us find constructive solutions.
However, it's not always easy. Some of the following can happen when we try to locate the stubborn thorn. We make the wrong diagnosis of what's upsetting us. We're in no doubt we're in pain, but we don't correctly attribute the source of the distress. We lash out at innocents, usually the kindest people around us.
Perhaps we start to get tetchy around our partners. We accuse them of being dull and obsessed with domestic trivia, and not as much fun as they once were. But the thorn might, in fact, lie elsewhere entirely. Maybe there's a lovely new colleague at work, and awkwardly we've developed a sort of crush on them. We don't even admit to ourselves that something so unexpected and challenging might be upsetting us.
We don't know where to look for the thorn, but others close to us, who are kind, forgiving and easy targets for our frustration, end up taking the blame nevertheless. Another option is that we try to ignore the pain. When the poor hurts too much in ways we don't grasp, it's tempting to try to numb our distress. We search out an anaesthetic that can reduce the discomfort but fails to address its causes.
We might take to drinking, playing non-stop games of solitaire, watching porn, or working obsessively. The thorn is still firmly lodged in place, but we notice it less. And yet the numbing move extracts a high price. It eats away at our time, undermines our self-respect, or leads to debilitating symptoms.
We might not be able to sleep, insomnia often being traceable to the turbulent impact of issues we haven't paid proper attention to during the day. Or finally, we might apply the wrong medicine. we might come up with unfounded confused schemes to solve a pain we don't understand we may take to blaming our partner the city we live in the government or our employer rifling through a cabinet of cures we might pick a journey to the desert or a quick divorce we decide to quit our jobs or sack someone it can be hard not to inflict severe pain on ourselves or others when we don't have an accurate handle on our own agonies fortunately there is almost always information to hand about what is really wrong our stream of consciousness contains a reservoir of muddled hints about our woes which need to be gathered and decoded the art of living is to a large measure dependent on an ability to locate our thorns accurately and in good time so that we will not forever be condemned to suffer our symptoms and terrify strangers with our roars.