Welcome to the inspirational living podcast.

Today's reading was edited and adapted from As Others See Us by John Thomas Huddle, published in 1901.

Today I would like to introduce you to a distinguished stranger, and that stranger is yourself.

Knowledge as well as charity should begin at home, and it's supremely important that we should

occasionally step within and renew our acquaintance with ourselves.

Above all others, we ought to know the one with whom we eat, work, and study,

in whose companionship we are continually, for we have more to do with that person than with anybody else.

We are responsible for their words and actions. They are the one person on earth

committed especially to our care, and surely we ought to know them. But the truth of the matter is

we do not. We in ourselves as a general thing are scarcely speaking acquaintances. We have been going on about

together for a number of years, and yet ourself is an utter stranger to most of us now. According to our

idea, he or she is the best person in the world. No one occupies so high a position in our estimation.

While we criticize and condemn our neighbors

and search our friends' eyes for moats,

we pat ourselves lovingly on the backs,

and thank the Lord we are not like other people. Then at other times, we regard certain

people as strong and able to do great things, but we distrust our own ability, shrink

from opportunity, and weakly say, there is no use to try. I can't. Now the object of interior study is to give

us a peep into the sanctum of self and make us acquainted with both our weaknesses and our powers.

Here we come face to face with the invisible forces and realities of life.

Here we find the causes of our unhappiness and failure, and such knowledge leads us speedily to seek the proper remedies.

The more we know about ourselves, the more we know about others,

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