Enough About Me. How are you?

From Self-Conscious to Soul-Conscious: A Chassidic Look at Healthy Selfhood

A story is told about a couple who were vicious toward each other. Week after week, at marriage counseling, they’d verbally attack one another as though the rabbi wasn’t even there. One day the rabbi had a brilliant idea. He scheduled their next session in a public restaurant, filled with strangers. Surely, he thought, they’d be forced to behave — at least be civil.

To his dismay, the couple continued to argue as if no one else existed! Finally, one of them turned to the rabbi for backup.

The rabbi calmly said:

“Look around you. There are over thirty people in this restaurant — and none of them care about your argument. Just how important do you think your problems are?”

Stunned, they fell silent.
After a few awkward seconds, one of them turned to the rabbi and asked:

“So… how are you?”

For months he’d been counseling them, and they’d never once asked how he was.
Now, having momentarily stepped out of themselves, they suddenly noticed that someone else existed.

The Trouble with “Self”

What’s so wrong with being self-conscious or self-aware? Isn’t self-improvement a good thing?

The problem is right in the word itself — self.

Whenever life becomes self-focused or self-absorbed, there’s no room left for another person, or even for G-d.

We can’t fulfill our mission in life while staring at our own reflection.

The First Self-Awareness

Adam and Chava were the first to struggle with this.
When they ate from the Tree of Knowledge, the Torah says, “Their eyes were opened, and they knew they were naked.”
They became self-aware — and everything changed.

Self-awareness can be the best or the worst of conditions.
It can lead to refinement… or to shame.

Before the sin, Chava’s self-awareness was pure.
She was aware of herself without being self-absorbed.
Her consciousness was innocent, not egoic.

The Midrash tells us that no woman after Chava possessed such pure self-awareness until Sarah, our Matriarch.
Sarah had a clear sense of self, yet her self was completely devoted to Hashem.
There was self — but no selfishness.

Noach and the Search for Innocence

Fast-forward. When Noach leaves the ark — the first act of humanity’s “new beginning” — he plants a vineyard and gets drunk.

Strange, isn’t it? Shouldn’t he have planted wheat to make bread? Why wine? Why intoxication?

The deeper Chassidic explanation is profound. Noach wasn’t morally weak.
He was searching for something lost since Eden — that innocent state before self-consciousness.

Getting drunk, in his mind, meant rising above self-awareness — returning to simplicity, to childlike purity.

He wanted to forget himself.

But it didn’t work. Because true innocence cannot be manufactured by escaping awareness — it must be transformed within awareness.
That’s why Sarah — not Noach — became the next human to achieve pure, healthy self-consciousness.

The Moral: From Self-Conscious to Soul-Conscious

So what’s the takeaway for us?

Self-improvement is good — but only when it’s not self-obsession.
If your entire focus is me, my diet, my goals, my growth, you’ll end up joyless and anxious.

We all know people who are so self-focused on how they look, what they eat, how much they weigh —
they’ve lost the joy of living.
They’re constantly asking:
“How am I doing?”
“How do I look?”
“Do you like me now?”

It’s painful.

A healthy self doesn’t need to take its own pulse every five minutes.
It simply is.

A healthy self doesn’t need attention — it gives attention.
And those who are least fascinated with themselves are often the most friendly, generous, and giving.

That’s the secret to a holy self:
not self-erasure — but self-tranquility.

When I’m comfortable enough within myself, I no longer need to talk about me.
There’s space now — for you, for others, for Hashem.

Humanity’s Rite of Passage

The story of Noach isn’t just personal — it’s collective.
Humanity after the Flood was like a child maturing into adulthood.
Before the Flood, the world was impulsive, emotional, reactive — like a toddler.
Afterwards, Hashem said: Enough. It’s time to grow up.

From then on, we were meant to live consciously —
not driven by instinct, but guided by purpose.

Chassidus teaches that our behavior is fueled by emotion, our emotion by intellect, and our intellect by pleasure — the subtle “taste” that shapes our thinking.

That’s why two people can study the same Torah verse and feel opposite things — one inspired, one disturbed.
It depends on where their pleasure lies: in the positive, or in the negative.

Noach’s offering after the Flood shifted that pleasure back toward goodness.
Hashem “smelled the pleasing aroma” — meaning, He found delight once more in humanity’s potential.
And with that delight, the world was promised: no more floods.

Final Thought

Noach tried to regain innocence by escaping self-awareness.
Sarah achieved it by sanctifying self-awareness.
And we — their children — are called to do the same.

To live with awareness, but not anxiety.
With self-knowledge, but not self-worship.
With confidence, but not ego.

To be not self-conscious — but soul-conscious.

That is where joy, humility, and true greatness meet.