We know nothing at birth. Knowing becomes the name of the game in life. It’s true, life is a game of sorts.  And we can’t play it without knowing the rules. Where are they found?  Parents are supposed to get us started.  And then it’s over to the university of hard knocks for most of us — at least in part.  We have only one life.  And sometimes, it’s short.  Yet, there is so much to learn in what may for some be a brief moment.

Socrates’ Brilliant Advice

Of course, advice is also not far to be found. It’s everywhere.  Everyone has advice.  Socrates is favored with being the source of a brilliant piece of advice: “Know Yourself.” “In what way?” you may ask. Does he mean by listening to the lessons we learn form experience? Even the few geniuses can look like fools if they don’t learn from experience. So, that’s part of it.

Who We Are

Most don’t bother to read the Bible for divine wisdom. It begins by telling us who we are:  made in the image of God. Humans’ amazing advance over all other creatures just in history known to us supports the contention. (The evidence of man’s brilliance alone suggests it’s true).  We won’t go far in life without the knowledge of who we are. Have we really stopped and absorbed that fact of life?   I wonder?

Four Key Questions for Our One Life

There’s a lot we need to know about ourselves to live life successfully.  So, in the next articles, I will attempt to address four key questions about how we function — some basics about how we are made and operate on aday-to-day.

The First, Simple Observation Is…

All humans are limited, right?

We need sleep and food because we lose energy resources and need them recharged or re-energized. Our muscles tire and need rest to rebuild. Our brain cells tire. (Their cells burn energy too, but need restoring and energizing in very different ways from other cells in the body). Even our human spirits can tire and we lose the inner strength to go on. Endless energy? No we don’’t have that, even though we act at times as though we do. We tire of things, people, and even entertainment and pleasure.  So how do we recharge our sagging inner resources? Without restoring them we would not be able to go on.

The FIRST QUESTION Is: How do we rebuild our inner energy when it is depleted, when we are completely done?

We all tend to be bipolar. I don’t mean psychologically.  One pole or extreme is restored by the world outside of ourselves (extroversion), and the other is refreshed from the inside (introversion). We all favor one or the other, even if some of us draw a little energy from both. Check it out.  Which is you? [Need help? On pages 39ff in my book INNERKINETICS, answer the questions 1, 8, 15, 22, 29, 36, 43, 47, 51. You will have more “As” or more “Bs”. More A’s means extroverted and more B’s, introverted.]

Have you ever noticed how we get irritable, and soon become unexplainably angry, if we don’t refresh our inner resources? Why it is that we feel irritable or even angry we often can’t explain to others. It’s a natural warning sign. A mother notices her child gets unexplainably irritable at times and instinctively instructs the child to take a nap. Adults feel the warning signs too.  But we all too often disregard them and suffer a meltdown or a burn out.

Different Ways to Recharge

We don’t all recharge in the same way. Some recharge by connecting with others and what is happening in the outside world.  And some seek solitude, recharging by themselves from the inside. But all of us need rest in one form or the other from the draining stresses of life.

So now you should know how you mostly go about recharging? It can be informative and fun to watch people’s dominant method of refreshment.

CAVEAT: Please don’t make the big mistake of valuing one more than the other. Both extroverts and introverts are great in their own ways. One is not more valuable than the other.

In the next article, we’ll address the second key question of our “One Life”.