This is a maxim that is so simple that at first it’s deceiving. And trite. How many times has an advertising campaign suggested that you ‘be yourself’ by purchasing their shirt/deodorant/car/beer/etc? And yet, even the ‘alternative’ people can seem fairly homogenous. You want to be unique? Well you’d better be an anarchist-liberal, with tattoos, piercings, practice polyamory (because monogamy is so repressive) and read (and genuinely like) Bukowski.

So just what does it mean to Be Yourself?

I think this is the work of a lifetime. It involves knowing what you have learned and perceiving what you have heard* (there’s that listening thing again). We have to listen to our hearts -yes, another trite saying- but our hearts get confused with our wants: junk food, extensive naps which cover up issues to be dealt with, more of this or that.

What do our souls need? Finding that out can involve a lot of navel gazing and meditating. The answers don’t have to be things like ‘I need to quit my job and move to Nepal for the next 10 years’ – although, it might, in which case, go you. But it might be as simple as: I need more good food in my life, I need to sing with others regularly, I need to get outside every day, I need do less and rest more, I need to prioritize meditation again and sharpen my ability to hear. All examples from my own life. All ways to figure out who this Self of Me really is and to get comfortable in my own skin.

Do the maxims build on one another? I don’t know as I haven’t read ahead! But the last three seem to. We stand in what we know, we learn to perceive what we have heard, and we figure out how to be ourselves.

*I skipped the previous maxim: ‘perceive what you have heard,’ which seems to me to be much like ‘know what you have learned.’ It implies that we reflect on what we have heard, aiming for understanding, not just merely hearing.

Today’s Delphic Maxim appeals to the scholar in me. I’ve spent a lot of money on my education – vocal performance and religious studies – so I damn well better know what I’ve learned. It has only been 8 months since I walked away from the PhD program and I already find myself forgetting sources, details, arguments I once had. But I don’t think book knowledge is necessarily what this maxim is talking about.

I think this maxim is encouraging self-reflection. I’ve learned not just fancy techniques or big words, I’ve also learned from my mistakes, from my interactions with others in the world, from my travels, from listening, from my experience. What have I learned? What do I know?

Turns out I know very little. If I reflect I will be humbled by that realization. But I will also take deeply to heart the few things I have come to know, and will value not just the knowledge but the ways in which I gained that knowledge. Knowledge isn’t just information.

This maxim reminds me to reflect. Not just on all the pieces of learning I’ve acquired; it also reminds me to stop in each moment, to take a moment to pause: what did just learn? Don’t just race off to the next fact, post, page, book, experience. What have I learned?

And once I’ve gotten a grasp on what I’ve learned, take ownership of that. As a female in the scholarly and online world, there are only too many males out there that want to tell me what I know or don’t know. This was a particularly frequent experience when I worked in bookstores and would get cornered by older, white, men who wanted to tell me all about some topic, even if it was an author, a book, or topic that I knew quite well.

So I shall reflect on what I know, and I will stand firm in that. Firm doesn’t mean resistant to new knowledge or learning, but it means…. I know what I have learned.

Delphic maxim number five is: Be overcome by justice (Ηττω υπο δικαιου).

The phrasing of this one stops me in my tracks. How in the world are we to be overcome by justice? Overcome is a word that I associate with overwhelmed; be overwhelmed by justice. Be completely covered in justice. Be brought to your knees by justice. Just what does that mean?

I can see how culturally, socially, institutionally we as an entity could stand to be overcome by justice. But what does this look like as an individual?

Justice means fair, right, reasonable, equable. Don’t I already practice those things? I try. But am I overcome by justice? What would it look like if I was?

Justice, from the Victorian Tarot

This is a post filled more with questions than insights. I’d like to think I’m practicing justice – social, legal, environmental – as much as I am able. But I doubt that I am overcome. This post is a good reminder to think more on what this means and how I can be act as a force for justice in this world, act for what is right, reasonable, fair, and all things equitable.

What does this maxim mean to you?