When we’re not the real deal, we know it. When the feeling of an experience does not flow from our genuine reaction, but from our expectation of ourselves to feel something. A façade, a front, behind which we hide our real feeling. ‘Fake it til you make it’ we have learnt. LOSING TRACK OF "ME". So often we can feel we only exist in response to the demands of others. We try to think, and feel and behave in the way that others believe we ought to think, feel and behave. We inhabit a series of roles and behaviours that we have learnt, and we lose track of who we actually are, maybe for decades. But sometimes we have glimpses. We find ourselves being unselfconsciously silly or intuitively reaching out with kindness and we ask ourselves, that’s who I am - where has that part of me been? OFTEN OUR GREATEST FRICTIONS ARE BORN IN OUR RESENTMENT THAT WE SAID YES, BUT WE MEAN NO. THE HARD WORK OF BEING HUMAN IS discovering our real deal.
SAYING YES, MEANING NO.
Soren Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher, pointed out way back in the 1850s that the most common despair is to choose ‘to be another than oneself’. Faking who we are is deeply unsatisfying. Deeply uncomfortable. A lack of authenticity in our lives causes us great irritation, resentment, anxiety, stress, sadness, fear and anger. It bubbles up in us. Of course we can push it back down with our well-honed coping mechanisms (anything from sarcasm, anxiety or tantrums through to addictions), but still it rises up.
TRY IT NOW
And it is only when we become sufficiently curious, sufficiently courageous, to wonder what is underneath, that we can finally discover ourselves. Gently. A gentle asking, a gentle noticing: that’s interesting, I’m feeling very angry about having to empty the dishwasher yet again – why am I so angry about this? What is this really about?
Kierkegaard felt that it was the purpose of
human life, for
us to discover and to be, our true selves. But of course, this is not easy. This is the hard work of being human. The discovery of the unknown corners of ourselves, our real deal.
48 | TWO: PEOPLE WANT THE REAL DEAL
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