We are each known and unknown. Everyone is.

Some people seem to know us, and some people don’t.

Family, friends, people at work, clients, and others know things about us.

What’s the difference between being known informationally versus being known essentially? Being understood and being accepted?

The deepest question is – do others really know who we are to ourselves, and also how large and sincere are other people’s desires to know us truly? To take the time and caring effort to understand what we feel to ourselves. Our dreams, hopes, fears, doubts, failures, successes. To really see you. Hear you. Value and respect you and your work.

That is one of our deepest desires. longing, and one of our fears. It’s a paradox. A universal question.

What will people do with the facts and truth about you?

There is also another side to the paradox – What about the cost and the personal choice to remain hidden? What do we lose when we remain safely unknown?

It takes courage and vulnerability to know and to be known.

We each have a vision about what it means to be known. It could be in the field of earning celebrity status, a highly successful business person, inventor, politician, or leader.

Perhaps you want to be known by the masses or by a designated audience, your smallest viable audience, of people who like what you have to offer and who you are. That might be 500, 1,000, or 5,000 people. Perhaps it is in your community or on social media, where you have a certain number of followers?

There is this, too – How much do you want to know yourself? We sometimes avoid or forget to do that. Indeed, it is a lifelong study to know who we are.

How do we combine the mystery in us with the facts?

Being fully known might be impossible – and maybe that’s okay. There’s something beautiful about the inexhaustible mystery of a person. What makes this impossibility beautiful rather than frustrating? What if the mystery keeps relationships alive and growing?

And perhaps equally important – how deeply do we desire to know others truly?

How does knowing another person help us to understand ourselves?

All of the questions that arise from being known or unknown have a meditative quality to them that can guide us to answers when we sit and reflect on them.

What does it mean to you to be known?

Thanks – Michael (he, him)

Please share my Daily with your tribes.
This is also key – Being Known.

#2009