How Do I Not Know Myself?

After 56 years

I have been having an increasing number of experiences in which I find myself realizing that what I thought I knew about myself is not true at all. This is very strange, bumping up against a fact about myself that I had believed was true for not only years, but decades, and to discover it is not true. I am not sure if it was ever true, but it is certainly not true now, and I can only wonder—why did I think it was true and when did it stop being true and why did I not know it then?

Let me explain.

I had told people multiple times that I don’t listen to music. But recently I purchased a speaker for my kitchen and signed up for Pandora so that I can listen to music while I cook or while I hold the baby. And I ACTUALLY DANCE WITH HIM. I did not think I liked to dance!

I had believed that I don’t like to try new things, and in particular that I don’t like to try new foods. But for Mother’s Day this year one of my kids bought me Limburger cheese, because I like blue cheese and he interpreted this as me liking nasty, smelly cheese. Guess what? I love Limburger cheese. My father used to eat Limburger cheese when I was a kid, but I don’t remember ever tasting it. It smelled too awful to taste. It turns out that my father knew something I didn’t know. And maybe he on purpose didn’t give me a taste so he could keep it all to himself.

I had believed that I am not very good at handling pain and tend to go to the doctor too much, that I take pain killers too often, that I should learn to be more stoic. But I keep having friends tell me that actually I have a freakishly high pain tolerance and that if I am complaining about pain, that means it must be really serious. How is it possible that I had come to believe something that was the opposite of true about myself?

I had accepted about myself that I am bad at communicating and that I am quite stiff when I present to other people in public. But the last few years I was an author, I became very comfortable presenting to readers. I don’t mind giving presentations at my new job, either. I don’t even sweat that much anymore. I have had multiple people tell me I am very, very good at explaining complex things in terms anyone can understand.

I had the idea that I was bad at math and that I was only good at right brain tasks that were more artistic. And now I have a job in the finance world and I use a calculator every day. I manage numbers with ease and do complex tasks using numerical calculations without a second thought. I do not even think of numbers as a separate task from explaining numbers, which I also do all the time.

I had been told that I was rigid and found change difficult to deal with. But I feel like I don’t fear change anymore and that I am quite flexible and curious about different ways of doing things.

Somehow I grew up believing that when you got older, you became more set in your ways, that you were less capable of learning and that everyone knew who you were already. Who you were was set in stone. But this turns out to be the least true thing about me ever. And I’m not sure it was ever true about other old people. Maybe they were just saying the good stuff for the other old people. Maybe *I* am the Limburger cheese.