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poetry, prose, and other strings of words · 1993 - 2003
The Self-Actualized State
September 12, 1995
[This was an assigment for my introduction to philosophy class at the University of North Texas, during the fall of 1995, sophomore year. The writing and thought could be improved, but I don't feel like updating this right now, and it is an interesting portrait nonetheless.]
Who am I? What am I? Age old questions, still relevant today. I am. I am Stephen Andrew Fuqua. That name is me. I am that name. But, that just takes us in a circle of questions, for what does that mean? We still haven't answered the real question of who I am. That it is yet to be completely determined, yet there is something there. I am nearing self-actualization, but once again, that is a constantly changing situation. So, who is Stephen A. Fuqua?
There is much in a name. Mine are not rare, but neither are they common. I don't honestly (though we all sometimes wish so) think that I am something rare, but I also know that I am not something common. One may call it arrogance if one wishes, but I don't think that Kierkegaard or Sartre would agree. I see myself both as a thinker and as a talker at the same time. I question and I ponder. Sometimes to no great avail. I have many great dreams (or maybe grand delusions). Dreams of writing poetry, making music, writing literature, or coming up with a Grand Unified Field Theory and winning a Nobel Prize in Physics: these are mine.
I see myself as a dichotomy that does not always exist and cannot figure out what to do. I see myself as possessing wonderful talents, but being hard pressed to allocate enough resources to actually do something in one particular field. I cannot figure out how best to reach complete self-actualization, a dream I cherish (though I think I am pretty darn close to it). I cannot completely interpret my own mind, but I think I understand so much.
I see myself as wanting to do it all — with perfectly legitimate reasons, of course. Then, behind the thin veil, I see my animalian traits of greed, power, and influence in all of their glory.
I am a loving person who believes he has, at this young age, loved as too few have done (percentage wise); yet, I cannot love everybody as I love myself, something I desperately want to do. I see myself as being very non-biased/prejudiced, but I realize that I am still a guardian of the old ways. I can never be color blind as I wish to, especially when I continually think this.
I see myself as being very concerned about some people's perceptions, but, thankfully, not all.
I am an optimist who mixes in a good deal of realism and pessimism (notice that I do not equate them). I am an optimist because I believe that the human condition can and will be improved.
I am a member of the fringe — that is, the fringe between "normal" (i.e. boring Westerners) and the "individualistic" (i.e. weirdoes, nonconformists, not necessarily existing persons). I often regret that I am part of no one group; that I don't really belong anywhere. Despite this, I never become part of the group. I just feel this occasional minor loss of companionship that I see all around me.
I think I am halfway, no more, towards self-actualization, but by my continued resistance to discovering and acting upon the answers, I am running myself against a brick wall constantly. So, that is where I see myself standing in a somewhat general way. That very well may tell very little about who I am, but it tells me everything. It is probably impossible to relate this information to my state of self-actualization for anybody but myself and the philosophers who attempt to generalize the meaning of self-actualization.
According to Abraham Maslow, there are twelve major traits that self-actualizing people possess. I shall now proceed through these in relation to myself in order to facilitate an outsiders' understanding of my state of self-actualization. For several of the criteria, an explanation is useless; that is, the phrase says it all. For those, I shall not make any comment.
1) This is one of the areas I believe I must work at. However, I do believe that my perception of reality, though somewhat askew to the conventional one, is fairly accurate. And it shall only continue to grow in accuracy as I learn more and understand nature more (for that is my real goal, though I know I can never reach it 100%).
2) I must humbly say that this is very true of me, though, as I said, this is not as true as I would like to it be someday. It is true that I am somewhat of a perfectionist, and this, like all other areas, is an area that I see believe I need to majority perfect.
4) At times, I can be quite a public, outgoing person, however, I am at heart quite an introspect.
5) When moving from situation to situation, I move rather smoothly, without hitches. I do not fit in a specific place anyway, so what is there to hinder my independence?
7) While I may not, at this point, have peak experiences similar to Einstein's, I do have my peaks. Naturally, there are also the valleys in life that I fall into.
9) It is true that I have many acquaintances, it is also a fact that I do not consider the majority of them to be real friends. There are very few people I consider to be true friends, and I can only have a certain small number of friends at any given time.
10) My ethical sense is not the ethics of the traditional Western/Christian. They are the ethics of my religion, the Bah�'� Faith, and of my particular bent on it, one that, in sum, is probably not all too conventional.
Along with these things I believe there should be one more important characteristic of self-actualizing people: They know what they are doing. S�ren Kierkegaard says, "What I really lack is to be clear in my own mind what I am to do. The thing is to understand myself, to see what God really wants me to do; the thing is to find a truth that is true for me, to find the idea for which I can live and die." This lacking of clarity is what I believe separates me from those who are truly self-actualized.
At this time, I cannot figure out what is it that I truly want to do. Given any choice, without having to worry about monetary considerations or any of that crap, I would choose to follow the course of philosophy and theology. However, I am somewhat torn between this and physics. I see that it may be possible to, once again, apply philosophy to physics in order to understand the nature of things; however, my true interest lies more with understanding the abstract, with understanding myself, than with understanding nature (though this is a very high goal of mine, to understand nature). It truly comes down to the choices I shall make during the next few years of my education. Overcoming the anguish of decision-making in this respect will lead to my self-actualization.
So, who am I? I am a person. I exist, though my existence is often quite intangible. I am Stephen A. Fuqua.