溫故知新 Old wisdom, today’s insight — ONGO
I Have Become a Question to Myself
Am I not the strangest, hardest riddle to myself?
I have become to myself a land of difficulty… I have become a question to myself.
The deeper Augustine dug into his own interior, the more unknowable he became to himself. Wandering the vast palace of memory, asking why he could not do the good he wanted and did the evil he did not, he wrote: "I have become a question to myself." The self had become the nearest yet strangest object. This opened a long lineage turning inward. Montaigne made himself the subject of inquiry in his Essays; Pascal held that the more one looks inward, the more one finds greatness and misery at once; and later psychology redrew this darkness with the idea of another self beneath consciousness.
If there are nights you cannot claim to fully know yourself, this ancient confession is beside you still.
This confession oddly comforts me.
📝I, Too, Stand Before It
This confession oddly comforts me. So it is not only I who do not know myself — even one called a saint felt lost before himself. I often cannot explain to myself why I grew so angry, why I said the words I now regret. Augustine saw that helplessness not as failure but as the mark of honest self-inquiry. The moment I think I fully know myself, inquiry ends; but if I accept myself as a question, a road opens. I, too, am a riddle not yet solved to myself.
✍️Your Answer
The lineage of the ancients ends here. Now it is your turn before the question. There is no right answer — only how you, today, would answer.
🔒 This answer is stored only on your device. It is never sent to a server.
This is not a museum of answers but a lineage of questions. All sources are public-domain texts; the lineage and reflection are 100% original ONGO content.
