To act with humility
is to be aware
that I am unomniscient and uncertain
so I need
to be on guard
against the unforseen
bad consequences
of my action.

When I excuse
my faults
I lose the opportunity
to improve myself.

When I accept
my faults
and evaluate my self
I can then
improve my self
towards the wisdom and virtue
I need
to achieve optimal joy and happiness.

Are bad-habits
actions we do on impulse
without carefully thinking
whether we should do these actions?
Do bad-habits
lead us away from joy and happiness?
Towards unjoy and unhappiness?
Like overeating makes us fat and diabetic?
Liking smoking cigarettes gives us lung cancer?
Like alcoholism wrecks our life?

Should we introspect
to become self-aware of our bad-habits?
Evaluate our bad-habits?
And reform our mind
to expunge bad-habits from our mind?

Is a ‘reaction’
an initial impulse to act
after an experience?
Do reactions
get us into trouble
when we act out the impulse
without first self-introspecting,
becoming aware of emotions and thoughts,
self-evaluating emotions and thoughts,
and self-correcting emotions and thoughts?
For example:

A toddler cries
then her mother slaps her hard
then regrets the slap
when her toddler cries more miserably.

A youth insults a man at a bar
then the man punches the youth hard
knocking him to the floor unconscious
struggling to breathe,
then the man regrets the punch
and regrets getting arrested even more.

When I am in pain
I have discovered
calmly introspecting
gains me self-awareness of my pain,
and helps me achieve acceptance
of how the pain is happening;
and then calmly expressing my pain
in words
enables further self-awareness of my pain,
diminishes the psychological-energy of the pain,
and helps me endure the pain
calmly.
Is it the same way for you?

Is self-awareness of
my emotions and thoughts
necessary
to improve my emotions and thoughts
into wisdom
about how to achieve
my joy and happiness?

When I fear to say
to myself
what I fear to say
to others,
I insist on expressing
in the privacy
of my own mind
what I feel and think;
and I remind myself
that self-awareness
of my emotions and thoughts
enables me
to evaluate my level of happiness
and strive to improve
my level of happiness.

There comes a time at night
when I am too tired to pretend
to be what others want me to be
and can be only myself;
late night is a time
when it is easier to discover
who I am.

When people say
“I know you”
what does that mean?
Do they have a concept of you
in their mind
which they have reified
as their reality?
Does the real you
exist only in the minds of others?
Or, are you something
which precedes the concepts of others?
Is the authentic you
only discoverable by you
by introspective self-awareness
and self-discovery?