The vast majority of people have made essential, irreversible compromises by the age of 21 that set them off of the path of full honesty.
The most common of these compromises is in their choice of romantic relationship. They choose a partner who limits them in the same ways in which their parents limited them. A man will choose a woman who comforts him. A woman will choose an inattentive or aggressive man. Variations abound. Only after this fundamental choice do people then become aware of the value of self-knowledge. Usually they are provoked by the conflicts with their spouse or partner and decide they will wield self-knowledge in order to attain relationship improvements. These people do see improvements and they think therefore that their self-knowledge is whole. They disregard the moment they lied to themselves in falling into the lifelong relationship trap because things feel better than they did before, after all.
Another way in which young people make irreversible choices is they allow for too much slippage for too long. They become inundated in the madness of their parents’ abuses. They loaf around as addicts. They pass up opportunities that only come once in a lifetime. They then use “self-knowledge” after the fact to “forgive” themselves. This is the ugliest compromise: the death of the original.
Such people walk around the world as partly-aware mutants. For the even rarer, fully alive people, these mutants are incredibly dangerous. These mutants suffer from motivation problems. Their psyches are peppered with the tombs of various sides of themselves they let wither on the vine. Fully alive people must guard themselves against the charms (which are cover-ups for self-loathing) that mutants present. Fully alive people must walk with fire at their heels and burn away the clutching hands of the partly-aware.
It is too late for most, by age 23. The artist has died. The original is gone. What is left is peaceful parenting and the promise of the next generation.
