Personal growth is a constant reflection of the choices one has taken to aid the Self in making better decisions at forks in the path to come. Personal growth isn’t something one does by reading a book and executing against its vision. That isn’t personal growth, but instead a cheap form of outsourcing of the same. And yet the self-help sections of bookstores are filled with best sellers which promise everyone the opportunity to live the path which allowed {insert famous individual here} to succeed and potentially share, if one is a strict disciple of the process, a sliver of their success. It baffles me, and leaves me to wonder, and worry, about the nature of individuals, and the loss of Self.

Looking at society today I find myself convinced of the following: Our children are coddled and sheltered. Our youth is disillusioned and unmotivated. Our generation is lost, while our parents deliver entitlements to themselves for which we will someday have to answer to to our yet unborn grandchildren. Declaring war on apathy and indifference would just be another cheap parlor trick to join the War on Poverty and Drugs which has already left us with a farcical social safety net and a totalitarian incarceration rate. The mountain our generation must climb now isn’t one with a fancy name nor one which promises endless riches and glory, but instead one that must be taken upon by a society of lost individuals pushing for a renewed and improved collection of Selves who together at the top will have created through their journey a society in which the sum of the whole is greater than that of the parts.

This series of essays will be my contribution for this Lost generation’s quest to rediscover itself, with the hope that we can deliver a better tomorrow than the one that we inherited today. The preceding paragraphs of this post are a basic introduction of the problem that I hope to address, and the next few paragraphs are the framework upon which I plan to build.

My primary goal is to define the Self and show how awareness of the Self leads to a better understanding of one’s environment. This in turn lays down the foundation for a society of individuals who are both aware and invested in the whole exactly because it empowers the individual.

The Self is the collection of decisions which have been made during one’s journey and a loose understanding of the consequences which resulted and factors which preceded the said decisions.

The role of the Self is as the foundation upon which future unknown decisions will be made given that the anxiety over the uncertainty of the future is somewhat relieved by a faith that one’s past experiences will aid in one’s future conundrums.

The thesis is that only through an acute awareness of the Self are we able to rediscover a sense of belonging and togetherness of which the now defunct American dream has robbed us.

This won’t help others walk their paths. This is not a self-help essay. The only goal is to act as a sounding board for anyone who reads it and finds in it a nugget of interest for themselves.