I don’t know about you, but for me, the last few months have involved a lot of soul-searching.
I would have said “introspection”, but that word implies that I’ve actually been studying my inner self. I certainly thought I was, but now I’m not so sure. “Soul-searching” feels more accurate, not in the sense that I was searching within my soul, but that I was searching for my soul.
Over the last few months, I have been thinking about authenticity, what it means, what it looks like to live authentically. I have wondered about my truth, tried to figure out my deepest core needs, desperate to know for sure because there are real and monumental changes afoot that depend on these answers, this knowledge.
My contemplations have brought me to the groundbreaking conclusion (/s) that there’s no way of knowing, in any objective way, what my “truth” is or what “living authentically” looks like for me. Our true, authentic selves are not discovered, they are decided*—hopefully by us. What I mean by “decided” here is the moments when we have realizations about ourselves and commit to them. The realization—about a hobby, a career, a partner, a habit, a preference—is nothing until we choose to incorporate it into our self-perception, which in turn informs our presentation to the world.
Rather than find this liberating, at the moment, I’m just exhausted by it. If so many of us experience decision fatigue from trying to pick a TV show to watch, how much worse is that fatigue when it comes to deciding who we are in the world? If we don’t discover ourselves, and instead decide what our selves are, but we are constantly beset by outside opinions of and demands upon those selves—how are we ever supposed to know our true selves? Is there even such a thing as a true human self that can be understood in isolation, even from our own minds?
And, in yet more exhaustion, in my experience, others expect decisions to be justified, particularly when those decisions beget changes. But what if the justification is simply, “I want to experience this”? “I want to expand my palette of self, and this metaphorical color attracts me, and I want to see what it looks like on me”? Our society is not built for exploration for its own sake, certainly not of our selves. Individuality, eccentricity, is a privilege afforded only to a few, and it has its own archetype.
Let’s think of this a little differently. I’ve sought treatment for various things by answering a hundred versions of the question, “Are the symptoms disruptive to your life?” I always thought it made sense to ask that question, but lately I’ve realized that it’s a surprisingly deep and difficult one, at least if you look past the capitalist surface level that most providers are really asking about (i.e., is this making you a less productive worker?). Maybe I just take it too seriously; but in order to answer the question, it seems like you need to know your truth, your deepest authentic life—otherwise how are you supposed to recognize that, for example, the depression symptoms are “disruptive” and not just how your life is supposed to be?
It’s also a risk-averse question. It’s, “Are you struggling enough to make change worth it, or are you fine to keep plodding along as you’ve been going?” Not, “What possibilities for happiness are created by the changes you’re contemplating?” It is a question that focuses on fear and unhappiness. How bad is it, really? Is it bad enough, or could it be worse? What is enough? What is worse?
We decide who we are by experiencing, and by taking what feels right to us and building it into ourselves. Which is why the risk-aversion of “are the symptoms disruptive?” is entirely counter-productive to the self-knowledge it is demanding. There is no way to know what feels right to you without trying. How do we know if the symptoms are disruptive when we’ve been living with them for so long? How do we know if we like this hobby unless we try it? How do we know if our life can withstand a change unless we change it?
Our selves are fundamentally dynamic because we are alive; the only way to know ourselves is simply to live.
So—where shall I leave you, in this philosophical newsletter entry? Be prudent, but not fearful, and encourage curiosity and exploration whenever and wherever possible—including in your own heart.
-Neil
*Obviously there are some things that we do not get to decide, because our society has created systems of such powerful inertia that individuals are forced to be subject to their taxonomies. Imagine how much harder self-determination is in those conditions.