Knowing Thyself

What are the toughest questions to answer? Most of the times these questions involves the self. For Eg: "About me", "Tell me smth about yourself" etc. All our lives we try to judge people, form opinions about strangers, try understanding others but how does it matter? Why we try to understand others when somewhere we don't even understand ourselves? We have a self-perceived notion about who we really want to be but sometimes that notion is the exact opposite of what we truly are. Its only in the times of adversity when things don't go the way we plannned, in the times of utter desperation, in the times of complete hopelessness that we come across a side of ours that is a complete stranger to us. What if we don't like that side of ours? What do we do then? Most of the times, we refuse to acknowledge that side completely. We wrap it in multiple layers and bury it deep inside ourselves where we can hide it from everyone and even from ourselves. But what makes us dislike that side of ours? Is it the society that has made its own norms regarding good and bad? It all starts from the time we are kids, we undergo a very smooth and very strong hard wiring wherein we are made to believe things that might not be true or probably that might not be anything close to reality. So what do we do to get out of that hard wiring?
I guess thats when we need to face the adverse situations wherein the other side of ours is exposed and instead of hiding that side somewhere, we need to accept that side of ours. We need to analyse it. We need to face it. We need to make a decision. At times like these we face our worst of fears. We learn how to overcome that fear. We have two options infront of us: Either we succumb and let our lives take the course, our fear wants us to take OR face our fears and let the life take the course that we somewhere want it to take. In both the cases, the final outcome would be what is destined by the higher powers but in the later, we would atleast overcome our fears.
When times are truly testing is when we also realize how much are we ready to push ourselves? What are the things we are ready to give up? How much are we ready to give up? What are the things that are most important for us? We come to know so many things and facets of our personality that would have always been hidden if it wasn't for the testing situations.
It is therefore probably that God gives us struggles, sadness, happiness and so many other emotions. It's only post these emotions that we can discover so many things about ourselves and others. Afterall, life is nothing but a journey of self-discovery.