This is Hidden Brain. I'm Shankar Vedantam.

In the enchanted world of Harry Potter, the young wizard discovers a mysterious artifact known as the mirror of Eresed.

Carved into its frame is a cryptic inscription. The words make no sense. You have to read them backward to reveal the mirror's true purpose.

I show not your face, but your heart's desire.

When young Harry looks in the mirror, he sees himself ensconced in the loving embrace of a family

he never knew. When his friend Ron gazed into the glass,

he sees himself finally stepping out of the shadows

and outshining others.

The vision presented by the mirror of Arisid

is alluring, but treacherous.

Albus Dumbledore, the wise headmaster of Harry's school,

warns that men have wasted away in

front of it, even gone mad. The danger lies in the lure of a single perfect image, a vision

of the self so captivating that viewers lose themselves in it.

Many of us spend decades searching for a mirror of ERISA. We ask ourselves, who am I really? What do I really want?

These questions are the prelude to the thing we really desire.

Once I know who I am, once I know what I want, surely I will then know what will make me happy.

This week on Hidden Brain, why the search for self-knowledge can feel like a mirage, and how to build ourselves a more accurate mirror.

From our first days in school,

we are taught that the goal of education is to know the world.

We go about mastering the laws of physics, the turning points of revolutions, the syntax of foreign languages. But we're

also told there is a deeper requirement for a well-lived life, to know thyself. Acquiring self-knowledge

...