Knowing yourself is a crucial ability because it allows you to be self aware of who you are and what you really possess. Having self-awareness means that you are able to accurately recognize your own emotions, thoughts, and values, and how they impact your behaviors. The importance of realizing our potentials and weaknesses because it strengthens our self confidence while making sure we make the right choices. No matter the surrounding environment, we can distinguish our own thoughts and actions from external circumstances. The story of The Pigman and Me, Just Once, and Geraldine Moore the Poet are great examples about this life-long principle: knowing yourself. In The Pigman and Me, Paul, being a new student, got his first revenge at school due to his lack of following school rules and not asking about it. Through Nonno Frankie’s guidance, he finally realizes what he lacks and what John wants during the revenge. Just Once is a story about a star football player, Moose, wanting to be the ball carrier so he could receive the cheer from the audience. After scoring the ball, he realizes that he would perform better when defending, and quits carrying the ball again. The teenaged girl Geraldine in Geraldine Moore the Poet lives in desperate poverty and loneliness every day that she soon forgets the meaning of school and the beauty of nature. She claims that she can’t write a poem because there’s nothing lovely about her world. In the end, Mrs. Scott encourages her that there’s always something glorious about the world, it’s just she doesn’t spend time noticing it.
Our personalities affect our lives, just as the nearby surroundings affect our characters too. Certain traits are revealed in our actions, thoughts, and decisions. Paul in The Pigman and Me, Bryan(Moose) in Just Once, and Geraldine in Geraldine Moore the Poet all possess distinct dispositions, which make readers understand the choices they make. In The Pigman and Me, the new student Paul seems to be careless but self-willed. As Nonno Frankie says, he fails to know the school rules due to his lack of observance. When John announces that he’ll have a revenge on him, Paul gets worried and is willing for a victory. During the revenge, Paul makes a clever action to fake lying on the ground in order to earn satisfaction from the crowd and John, which reveals his smartness. Moose in Just Once appears to be an ambitious and competitive football blocker who is not easy to mess with. A description of his strong physical appearance enables us of his tough skills. His stubbornness is manifested when he repeatedly applies for the role of carrying the ball even when his coach persuades him to stay at his own position. In Geraldine Moore the Poet, poverty represses Geraldine to turn to a lonely and desperate girl with no hope for her future. While other teenagers devote themselves to their studying, she worries about owing rents, buying new clothes, and staple food. By virtue of the intense pressure given by society, she degenerates into a helpless girl who forgets to explore the hidden beauty of the world.
People’s perspectives on ourselves makes us see our self-images, which sometimes help us gain an insight of our strengths and weaknesses. That’s why people who truly care about us are often the ones who give us the most useful advice. In The Pigman and Me, Paul’s wise grandpa Nonno Frankie claims that his grandson, being a new student, lacks observance and guts. He warns him to always ask for the rules to avoid trouble. Demonstrating detailed guidance on winning the revenge shows that he wishes him to understand his teachings. In Just Once, Coach Williams sincerely suggested Moose to stay in his position because he knew that he would contribute better for his team as a blocker to win the game. While the audience shouted in making Moose the scorer, his coach remained his own thoughts, which later made Moose self-realize a stupid choice he made. Poverty in Geraldine Moore the Poet continually bothers Geraldine’s life. Her neighbor, Miss Gladys, and the apartment’s superintendent both consider Geraldine as poor and desperate, which is true. Symbols of poverty like the broken socks and tomato stoup makes people around Geraldine make stereotypes of her, including her classmates, who joke about her being the “class poet”.
Having accurate self-images of ourselves allow us to stay positive, improve peer interaction, and make better choices. In fact, knowing ourselves benefits us the most compared with other people who really know you. All of the characters in the three stories had falsely known about themselves, but later on they realized who they truly are. In the beginning of The Pigman and Me, Paul feared that he would lose after accepting John’s future revenge. Because of the anxiety he felt when facing John, he soon regrets and felt great remorse about punching John on the face. He learned that making the wrong choice (not asking about the rules) would result in an unpleasant consequence. Therefore, he became smarter by grasping the crowd’s attention when he fell on the ground. Not only he learned about what John wants, but also the power of family when his sister saved him by beating Moose. In Just Once, Moose's primary motivation to carry the ball was to win the audience’s cheer. He only knows that he gains the audience’s attention but overlooks his skill in scoring the ball. Even though he earned everyone’s cheer after he scores, he realized his Coach was right, being in defense best suits him. He understood the importance of teamwork and that every position has its own advantage depending on which suits who the best. The exceptional difficulty to seek one’s knowledge about themself is best shown in Geraldine Moore the Poet. Although Geraldine has self-knowledge about her poor social status, she misses to appreciate the beauty of the world. School had no meaning to Geraldine, since the teachers didn’t help with her situation. Because of all the pressure of poverty, she forgot about all her strengths and negatively thought herself as a simple poor teenager. She didn’t realize that she actually can illustrate a poem, which made Mrs Scott complement her raw and honest poem. Finally, she realized that everything has a meaning, and the existence of beauty in nature.
Self awareness is indeed an essential ability to possess in life. It helps us become better decision-makers, supports us with more self-confidence, and recognizes our genuine thoughts. According to Aristotle, knowing yourself is the beginning of all wisdom. Our growth in life, including our career and relationships start with self-knowledge. Therefore, self-relationship is the basic, which means you can never count yourself as your own enemy. You cannot improve successfully if you constantly have a fixed-image of ourselves. Therefore, knowing yourself equals the key to every small success in life.
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