I’m in Melbourne most of this week and bits of next week. I’m doing my final subject in my conflict resolution studies. This is the subject I agonised over a few weeks ago, if you remember.

Guess what?

I’ve learned a lot about myself in the past two months.

Two months ago, I thought I had a pretty good idea of who I was, the things that made me Joan. Why did I think this? Because I do so much self-reflection.

But there’s a limit to how much you can learn through self-reflection. The things I’ve learned recently are things that other people have had to tell me about me.

Has that ever happened to you? People say, “You know, you’re really X, Y, Z.”

And you think, “…”

And then, “…”

And then, “Yeah. I guess so. Yeah! Wow! Really? You mean, not everyone’s like that?” I needed other people, people who look like me on the outside but are very different on the inside, to identify the intrinsically-Joan characteristics that I never thought to articulate.

I can count six revelations that other people have thrust upon me in the past two months. Six revelations. I think you’re lucky if you get one revelation a year.

It’s kind of like thinking you’ve mapped out the whole world and then discovering new continents. I understood the reality that even when your world is mapped out, you should expect the landmasses to shift in the future. But this is different, this bit about discovering more to map in the world as it stands today.

Imagine what I’ll learn when I have to live in another country for a year!

I’m not going to talk about what I’ve learned because it’s not meaningful or interesting to anyone but me. I just thought I should warn you, if you don’t know it yet, that even if you are the most self-aware of people, there are probably still things you can learn about yourself — especially if you’re still young.