I noticed, not without a certain discomfort, that I am, or, rather, that I’ve always been, a conscientious person. But what on the surface seems like a character trait, a moral virtue, or a desirable component of the personality, becomes, in the light of introspection, an enigma that demands to be unveiled layer by layer, to the marrow of experience.
Automatically, constantly, impulsively, I responded to the demands that were addressed to me, with a precision that betrayed fear, not enthusiasm. It isn’t difficult to identify the starting point: the relationship with my mother, a narcissistic figure in the deep sense of the psychoanalytic term, not as a cultural label. And yet, such an explanation, however seductive in its causal simplicity, collapses under the weight of its generalization, for maternal narcissism doesn’t fully explain why, in the absence of an affective reward, I continued to rigorously execute the demands, even when no one was paying attention.
As a child, my conscientiousness manifested itself in a kind of discipline: I did my homework, I learned everything that needed to be learned, and I didn’t cheat, not because I was told not to, but because there was an unwritten law of correctness within me. Not cheating was an internal coherence, a consistency of the image that I didn’t yet have of myself, but I respected it as an entity.
More curious is the case of mathematics tutoring, started in the fourth grade and done by the beginning of high school. I didn’t need tutoring; I understood everything from school, there was no performance exam, not even family pressure. There was no passion; mathematics was not a pleasure, I did it out of duty. A self-imposed but meaningless duty, as if someone, in a remote corner of my consciousness, had decided that I had to become an expert in mathematics to justify something, but what exactly? My mother wasn’t gentler when I had the best results in class, nor more interested in my performances.
Mathematics, with all its prizes and hard exercises, brought me neither love nor admiration. And yet, I kept going, I was doing hundreds of exercises a week, many of them with a degree of difficulty that was on the verge of ridicule for my age. And I didn’t do them because I would have liked the challenge, but because I had been asked, because I had been given the homework, and I, as a mechanism that responds to the stimulus of the task, functioned without questioning the legitimacy of the request.
It was the moment when, without realizing it, I abandoned playing with friends, painting, and spontaneity. Everything alive was replaced by everything that was imposed. If the impossible was asked of me, I had a kind of secret pride that wanted to make it a reality. I couldn’t afford not to know, not to be able to, not to have time. And not because I was motivated by the desire to succeed, but because the very possibility of failure was not admissible in my inner system.
My conscientiousness was a form of voluntary prison, a cell built from borrowed rules, self-imposed standards, and the deep and unconscious need to be worthy of an eye, otherwise blind, to see me.
I’ve also noticed that I was conscientious in college, in a way that, although it seemed natural at the time, today appears to me as a form of selflessness. The college, at least in the early years, wasn’t a space for exploration or gradual maturity, but another stage on which the same spectacle of relentless rigor unfolded. Another system in which I, without being explicitly asked, chose to function at a capacity that left no room for life.
I can assure anyone, and I say this without emphasis, with only a remnant of astonishment at my tenacity, that you cannot have a balanced and healthy life and, at the same time, follow with holiness a program of eight hours of study a day in the college benches, read a book a day, go through over two hundred theoretical pages in English and take consistent notes, write dense essays of five thousand words a week, do practical homework and breathe, that is, to exist as a human being, with body, needs and rest.
And yet, I did it, not for grades, nor for external validation, although this could come as a collateral consequence, but because I already had a deep idea about seriousness, about assuming a role to the end, no matter how demanding it was.
When I read those old books, with a language that was difficult to understand, boring, I didn’t fall asleep like many of my colleagues did. I didn’t rush reading; I didn’t read diagonally. I stood there, eyes wide open, not just as a reader, but as an involved witness, aware that every utterance required critical thinking and that every paragraph contained an idea I had to discover.
I read the literary analyses in English, heavy, dense, sometimes more complicated than the books themselves, not because someone imposed it on me, but because I thought that was how I should learn. I took notes with the seriousness of a researcher, although no one asked me to do so explicitly.
But I understood that if you want to get closer to something really, be it a book, a person, or a truth, you cannot do it in a hurry, superficially. You have to sink in and stay there.
And that is why, in front of the same works, my reaction was different from that of my colleagues. Not because I was smarter or more prepared, but because I was there entirely. For me, the book was not a pretext, a means of relaxation, or an educational obligation, but an object of contemplation, a reason for transformation.
And I cannot help but notice that during that whole period, I didn’t distinguish between effort and meaning: effort was meaning. But, in retrospect, I realize that this conscientiousness was waging, without knowing it, a battle against the inner emptiness. In the absence of a secure affective structure and an inner landmark validated by a loved one, I had built a refuge from the rules. An existential order in which I felt neither alive nor valuable, as I had hoped. But this conscientiousness, although real, visible, was not synonymous with joy. It was more of a form of survival.
I also noticed that I was conscientious in the therapeutic process, with a fidelity that, from the outside, might have seemed admirable, but which, for me, was only natural. I couldn’t conceive of any other way of being present in such an endeavor than with my whole being, with all the intellectual and affective availability that I could mobilize.
From the first sessions, my psychologist recommended a book to me. It wasn’t a difficult one; it was a reading that could be read in a few hours or a day or two, but I read it breathlessly, not only out of curiosity, but also out of an acute need for understanding.
The following week came two other recommendations, which I bought and read with the same involvement and inner seriousness, looking for revelation, not approval. The books were aimed exactly at my life, with all its cracks, and although it was sometimes difficult for me to hold them in my hands, because each page was written directly from a past that I had kept buried… I didn’t run away. I read them as a surgeon examines their wound: with lucidity, patience, and controlled pain. Not because I was strong, or because I possessed any extraordinary capacity for introspection, but because being conscientious meant coming prepared to meet myself.
It wasn’t a demonstrative conscientiousness; I didn’t come to meetings with ideas to tick off or conclusions to expose. I didn’t feel the need to always share what I had read or understood, because I knew that reading wasn’t for the therapist, but for me. It was my work with myself, not just within four walls, but in the space between a revelation and a delayed action, in that unseen place where real change slowly grows.
The therapist remarked, at one point, that I am her only client who reads all the recommended books. But despite this involvement, my transformation seemed slow in her eyes. Maybe because I didn’t make radical decisions, I didn’t cut all toxic ties, and I didn’t give up on the things that were hurting me. And she was right, I was advancing with small steps, often invisible, but each step was the result of an internal struggle, of an inner clarification that, although unseen, was profound.
That was my rhythm, one that may seem ineffective in the face of a modern paradigm that idolizes visible progress, but which, for me, was the only possible one. I was unlearning a lifetime of automatic reactions, of inclination to do the right thing. I was shyly starting to ask myself what I wanted. And this is where true conscientiousness begins: not in the impeccable execution of the task, but in the ability not to betray myself in the name of perfection.
The truth is, I never knew what to call this trait. I discovered the word “conscientious” as an old garment in which I was trying to recognize myself, but it isn’t a garment that suits me, nor a quality of which I can boast. It was, rather, a form of manipulation, conformity, and cancellation.
And now, when I try to define myself not by what I do for others, but by what I want to create for myself, I find that I am strangely unable to apply the same conscientiousness to the intimate space of writing, painting, and reading. Maybe because in these spaces, there is no longer an external authority to tell me what I “must” do. Because I don’t yet know how to be conscientious without being submissive.
Conscientiousness is born from an inner agreement, not from fear, shame, or the need for approval. Conscientiousness is free, synchronized with one’s rhythm, not with the duty imposed by another.
All this confessional unfolding had, in fact, only one goal: to reach, honestly and without detours, the nerve center, the one where I realize that I’m judging people who are not like me. Not in the ostentatious sense of contempt, but in a more subtle way, but no less painful. I feel irritation, dissatisfaction, and a kind of resigned disappointment when I notice the absence of conscientiousness in those around me.
It disturbs me to see that they do nothing, neither for themselves nor for others, that they float in an inexplicable lethargy, in that grey area of non-responsibility, of lack of involvement, of a life lived passively, without thinking, without acting, that they live in carelessness, shame or guilt, without really articulating the need for transformation. And for me, all this cannot be completely separated from the lack of respect for oneself, but also for the world in which we live together.
I don’t think I am absurd. I’m not asking for the impossible. But my values are clear and, despite all attempts to relativize, I cannot give up on them without feeling betrayed by myself. I’m looking for people who have in them something of the deep respect for life, something of the dignity of honest work, albeit imperfect, something of the courage to continue, of the determination that is not necessarily visible, but persists, something of the hard truth, of the sincerity that does not hide behind excuses, of the lucid assumption of one’s condition.
I know, I truly know how to understand fear, depression, blockage, guilt, not only theoretically, but really, because I carried them and sometimes, I still carry them inside me. But I believe in people, I want to be their support, I try to inspire the best I have, not as a lesson, but as an inner light that can, sometimes, ignite a spark in others. And yet, I cannot stay around people who don’t resonate with who I am. Not because I don’t have empathy, but because, inevitably, I would become irritated, disappointed, and stuck in an unbalanced relationship. I’d feel that I’m dying out, that I’m giving without receiving a real exchange, because I need people with whom I can grow.
And yet, although I can empathize with the fragility of those who are not conscientious, with their past and their repeated failures, I wonder if this irritation I feel in front of them doesn’t perhaps hide an unresolved blockage in me, a projection of my forced discipline on those who choose, or fail otherwise, to live without rigors. I wonder if I am irritated by the freedom that others can afford, because I have never allowed myself to be without blame.
Unless, behind this judgment, there is my longing to no longer live under the tyranny of my exigency. And yet, even aware of these things, I don’t believe that love implies unconditional acceptance in any form of closeness. I can love people for who they are, I can recognize their intrinsic value, their humanity, their dignity, without being able to stay by their side. Because love, no matter how pure, can only turn into a relationship when there is reciprocity, a reflection of values, a real intersection of our ways of being and living. Staying next to someone who assumes nothing, who moves adrift or carelessly, isn’t a proof of love, but a form of self-abandonment. It is not a lack of empathy to leave.
I indeed tend to take my own experience as a yardstick. I understand that others had more freedom in childhood or, on the contrary, reacted to suffering by withdrawal and passivity, not by compensation. I accept that we develop differently, that not everyone has conscientiousness as an existential spring.
But the experience forces me to admit that only once did I feel utterly understood. That rare, strange, and vivid moment, when another person’s gaze resembled mine, when the silence wasn’t empty, but full of meanings, when I didn’t have to explain, to reduce the intensity of my own experience so as not to seem exaggerated. It was a person like me. And that moment marked me, because it confirmed an uncomfortable truth: I rarely meet people like me.
I know how harsh it sounds. I know that, expressed in absolute terms, it risks sounding like an elitist or exclusivist statement. But it’s not about superiority; it is about the structure of an inner construction born from the need for coherence, assumption, and authenticity carried to the end. I don’t think I’m better than others. It’s not about intelligence either; I’ve met people with brilliant minds with whom I didn’t feel any kind of soul connection. It isn’t even about conscientiousness as a simple personality trait. It is about a way of being in the world.
I haven’t yet found the right vocabulary to describe this “being”. Language still escapes me, because I haven’t been taught to formulate my needs, desires, values, and disorders that define me. But, through these reflections, I try not only to tell who I am and what I went through, but to understand myself. And, ironically, this is also a form of conscientiousness, a form of radical respect for one’s conscience, for what is alive in me, even if it is difficult to live and sometimes impossible to share.
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