The Authentic Self
How to be uniquely yourself in a world made up of copies
Introduction to May’s Theme
The Stoic philosopher Epictetus taught his students that it wasn’t things themselves that upset us but rather our interpretations of those things.
We often think we know what we want. We think we know what will make us happy. But then, after lots of work, we achieve our goals, we successfully get what we wanted and we realize there is a bit of emptiness.
After the initial high wears off from the accomplishment, we look to what’s next, not really fulfilled. It turned out, our interpretation of what would bring us fulfillment was a mirage.
The writer
once summarized this mirage of endless rat-race pursuits for fulfillment as follows:“One of the most perilous illusions is that your real life has not yet begun, that your present existence is a mere prelude to some idyllic future. This idyll is a mirage that will fade as you approach, revealing that the prelude you hurried through was in fact the one to your death.”
Finding fulfillment in life can be difficult. It is sometimes thought of to be in the form of a job, something that will provide us money. Other times it is a calling, something that speaks to our soul and something greater than the self.
The irony is that a good majority of the time, what leads to fulfillment is not what the world dictates, not what others say we should want, but rather, what we ourselves want. And we come to this conclusion and our meanings of fulfillment by better understanding ourselves.
We spend our lives in search of answers. As children we explore the world for our own enjoyment, always asking questions and pursuing wonder for curiosity’s sake. As we get older, we lose this, we replace curiosity with ego and dogmatism. We become set in our ways and beliefs. We set a course and tell ourselves that is the only way.
But it is in fact through these two things, the exploration of self and childlike curiosity that we find answers to our questions of fulfillment.
For the month of May, we explore the theme of fulfillment. We look at how to navigate the self, how to be authentic in an inauthentic world, how to properly judge our experiences, what it means to have a vocation, and how we can escape the trap of perfectionism.
This Week at a Glance:
We kick off our monthly theme of mindfulness and fulfillment with a dive into what it means to live an authentic existence. Authenticity is one of the hardest things to achieve and yet we all desire to live it.
By the time you finish this meditation, you’ll learn:
🍭 What authenticity is, how we achieve it, and how we stand out from the crowd;
🍬 The difference between the Stoic view of “essence” and the Existentialists view;
🍫 How to become an authentic version of yourself in a world made of copies.
Authenticity is hard to achieve. We all like to think of ourselves as being unique — and we are unique — but what makes us authentic?
Authenticity is driven by aligning ourselves with our values. It is following those values through each of our actions. Not some actions, not actions when they’re convenient, but for all of our actions.
This tends to be difficult because we are mimetic creatures. We’re born with an innate ability to watch how others act, and then quickly try to understand and replicate those acts.
For example, when you smile at a baby, the baby tends to smile back, which then in turn causes you to smile, which reinforces their actions, which in turn has reinforced your own.
As we grow older, we continue this mimesis by watching how others act, what they desire, what they reject. We ourselves then replicate and form around the environments we are raised in.
The philosopher René Girard believed that everything we desire is based mostly on the desires of those around us who model the expectations of what we should desire. We are ultimately social creatures and we want to be a part of the crowd, while at the same time, learning to separate ourselves from it.
Too often than not, however, the majority of us get stuck in the replication phase and never truly break free and into our authentic selves.
The authentic self then is our stripping of the falsities that have enveloped us once we reach an appropriate age and instead, embrace our own world views and values, and allow those values to drive our actions.
The Greek and Roman philosophers believed that our essence, the thing that distinguished us from others, was innate to us and it was our job to go out and connect the pieces that would allow us to flourish within our own essence. As Marcus Aurelius wrote in book ten of Mediations:
“Whatever happens to you has been waiting to happen since the beginning of time. The twining strands of fate wove both of them together: your own existence and the things that happen to you.”
To the Stoics, it was up to us to grab our essence that already existed for us.
The existentialists on the other hand inverted this idea and believed that our essence was formed after we were born, that instead we were born as blank slates and we needed to be pushed out into the world to discover ourselves and therefore make our own essence. This is commonly referred to as “existence precedes essence.” As Jean-Paul Sartre would explain in his famed lecture Existentialism is a Humanism:
“Man first of all exists, encounters himself, surges up in the world — and defines himself afterwards.”
Skye Cleary, the philosopher and writer of the book How to be Authentic, wrote about the philosopher and Sartre partner Simone de Beauvoir and her Existentialists beliefs, stating:
“To become authentic means to create our own essence. It's the creation that is vital here. We don't discover ourselves, we make ourselves. Authenticity is a way of expressing our freedom: to realize and accept that we are free; to be lucid about what we can and can't choose about ourselves, our situation, and others; and to use our freedom as a tool to shape ourselves. Our selves are not the product of a chain of impersonal causes and effects. Creating ourselves is an art form- the act of intentionally choosing who we become.”
This of course is the great paradox of being human: we want freedom to be authentic, but with freedom, the majority of us look to others and copy, either consciously or unconsciously.
The majority of us require a guide in our pursuits of authenticity.
In order to truly be an authentic self, to bare ourselves naked to the world and to live an authentic existence, we must first become aware of our mirroring habits. Just acknowledging this in daily existence—am I do this because I want to or because others do?—snaps us from routine and forces us into introspection.
The second step in living authentically is to ensure that our actions align with our values.
Brené Brown says of the authentic self that it is the “the daily practice of letting go of who we think we're supposed to be and embracing who we are."
Authenticity is not something that easily comes to us. On the contrary, stepping out from the crowd through authenticity is one of the hardest things one can do. It requires us to part ways from the crowd, to take risks with our thinking and beliefs—our projected image—and to align ourselves and our actions continuously to our values.
And this is an extremely individualist process.
It takes tremendous courage.
It requires strenuous review of our lives.
But it is an authentic existence. It is a real life.
The final step in the path to authenticity is by being fully committed to the present moment.
When we reject looking to the past, and we understand the future is unwritten, we have only the present moment to hold to, to let our true selves take over.
It is as Albert Camus suggested, in order to be free, to be fully authentic, we need to realize that the “only way to deal with an unfree world is to become so absolutely free that your very existence is an act of rebellion.”
We need to relinquish the external world’s hold on us and live so very much in the present, in the who we are, that our authenticity shines through and we are therefore able to live an authentic existence.
Authenticity is a choice, it is about choosing. It is about rejecting the copy that is placed upon us and instead create an original piece of art.
Ourselves.
3-Bullet Summary:
🍰 Authenticity comes first and foremost from aligning one’s values with their actions;
🎂 Our “essence” is often equated with who we are—The Stoics believed we were born with essence and had to overcome it whereas the Existentialists believed we were born blank slates and made it ourselves;
🧁 We create an authentic existence by rejecting our tendency to mimic others, by matching our actions with our values, and by existing in our essence and therefore rebelling against the world’s notions of who we are or should be.
Until next week,
D.A. DiGerolamo
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to Amazon.com.