Our Sixth Sense

We all have five senses – sight, hearing, smell, taste, and touch. But we also have a sixth sense. It’s nothing psychic or paranormal. It’s our sense of self. We sense that we are unique individuals separate from other people. Where does this come from? There are clearly biological factors that help create our sense of self. We all have a different temperaments and genetic makeups. Environmental factors also contribute to our sense of self. From early on, our parents, caregivers, and siblings respond to us and nurture us in ways that help create our feeling of self. A positive environment will help us foster a positive sense of self, while a negative environment will do the opposite. But there is one thing in particular that creates our feeling of self more than anything else. This is our ability to form memories about our lives.

Each one of us has within us a unique autobiography, a chronology so to speak, of the events that have happened to us. This autobiography tells us who we are. If you woke up tomorrow without your autobiographical memories, your sense of self would be diminished or maybe even be gone. Our memories tell us where we have been, what we have done, and also influence our futures. In some ways, we are prisoners to our memories. Yet, regardless whether our memories are pleasant or not, they are our own memories. Without our unique memories, we would lose our sense of self.

So, what should we make of this? Our sense of self is largely molded by our actions. We get a lot of who we are from other people, of course, but our actions become our memories which build our sense of self. It is for this reason that we should take care to make our actions positive. When our actions are positive, we will have positive memories and our sense of self will, in turn, also be positive. We should also surround ourselves with positive people. Our sense of self tells us who we are. It is a reflection of the things we have done in life.