I have two tattoos.
One is a beginning, the other an ending, or perhaps vice versa.
On my right bicep, I have the words that were reputedly above the ingress and egress of the lair of the Oracle at Delphi. The Oracle, confined within a craggy crevice high in the mountains would hover intoxicated over a tripod of herbs and, for all intents and purposes, get high as a kite and dispense nonsense verses to all ye who entered to know the future, or at least an enigmatic horoscope of sorts to be decoded and interpreted through some nifty hermeneutic maneuvers to suit one’s needs. However, when one was about to enter the cave of Time will Tell, then you would see the words, “Gnothi Seauton” or, more commonly rendered to us anglophone as “Know Thyself .”
It is no surprise that I have put some stock into this phrase often via the gadfly noodlings of that waskily wabbit Socrates. He was just a messenger. I like the message.
Again, if you have visited this blog, it is no surprise that this is my mantra of sorts, even my weltanschauung perhaps. However, as Socrates wryly notes in the Protagorist of Plato, that most people only know half of the story, and not, as Paul Harvey would have said, “the rest of the story.”
After one would enter the hermetic cavern, he or she would receive the mantic and/or manic (that little “t” can cause many problems...) utterances of the stoned-out-of-her-bejeezus Sybil, then bewildered, would turn, to return from this liminal Space to the outside world, the real world, a changed man or woman. Yet, depending upon the dazed and confused state of the recipient, the second part of the mantra, the rest of the story, may or may not be seen, or more importantly, heeded.
Leaving, one would see “Meden agan,” less commonly rendered into English as “nothing in excess.”
At a certain point in one’s life, there comes a time for reflection and re-evaluation, for examining one’s moral fiber, or lack thereof. I knew that I had a bad penchant for drinking beyond my cups at times, and I decided to get my first tattoo, using both sides of the door, for it swings both ways, as my mantra. So, there it is on my right bicep:
Gnothi Seauton/Meden agan
Unfortunately, the best laid plans of mice and men...
Changing one’s life, I have found, does not happen over night. Though we may have epiphanies that indeed change our lives in an instant, as I have also experienced, the actually change takes Time, sometimes years.
I have learned to live the full mantra in all its fullness, but it took Time, and effort, and sustained belief in the former half in order to bring into effect the latter half. You cannot have one without the other, they are not in fact two parts, but merely one whole.
Every time I undress, or swim, or wear short sleeves, I am reminded about this quest for self-knowledge and self-overcoming. Yet, what I also don’t let slip ironically by is that you must also apply the second part of the mantra to the former.
We need to indeed “Know Thyself,” but even that must come in moderation, and there must be time too for just be-ing , a lesson that I have also learned, over Time.
As for the second tattoo, “dat, lieve kinderen, is weer een héél ander verhaal...”
