We carry so much in us. We are driven and fueled by so many different factors, so much has happened to us, that to even look inside of ourselves, to begin to unpack, feels like the entire world will have to stop – because often, unfortunately, who we are has been created by who have had to be. We become our coping mechanism, we become the victim who has persevered, it is our source of pride, and for good or for bad, becomes our story. We have committed to it, and in the process who we were before that commitment was made interrupted the story of who we were. The question then becomes: do we want to go back and start again?
I was doing a group workshop with young boys a number of years ago. About twenty of them, some from affluent neighbourhoods, some from townships. One boy, who I’ll never forget, refused to take part. When it was his turn to talk to me he made a joke of the entire process. Nothing that could be said to him was going to make him feel safe enough to be vulnerable in front of everyone, not for me, not for anyone. I was one of the younger facilitators at this workshop and it would last a weekend. At night, after the activities of the day, I would read the boys a bedtime story and sit in the hall waiting for them to fall asleep. Before this, the boys would collect their mattresses from a small room where they had been stacked on top of each other. I remember the room was wide enough for a bunk bed and next to it the mattress had been piled. The boys had to enter in a single file, one behind the other, and crowdsurf the mattress out the door. The boy who wouldn’t open up was right in front of me where I was supervising them, and when the boy in front of him accidentally stepped back onto his toes he was immediately punched in the face. There was no hesitation. Foot down, knuckles to chin. There were some tears and I spoke to the boys and asked everyone to leave except for the boy who had his foot stepped on.
An important side note is that I had spoken to the other facilitators at a later stage about the personal history of the boy to learn more about why he wasn’t opening up and what I could do to help. It was explained that the boy came from an abusive home and some examples were shared with me about what was happening to him.
By the time the boys had cleared the room the boy was hiding away from me in the bunk bed, crouched on the bottom bed. The only place in the room to hide or to prevent a blow. To hurt him I would have to physically pull him out and he had the ends of bed and pillars to hold on to. He was prepared for the worst. I walked over to him, crouched down as you should when you are an adult and trying to empathize with an 11 year old, and I said a single sentence.
“I know why your foot is sore.”
The boy suddenly broke down into tears, and we spoke for a while after that. The reason his foot was sore was because his father had embedded a pitchfork into his foot the week before.
Do we all carry such horrific stories in us? No. But what we do carry shapes us. That boy went on to be a prefect (student leader) at his school, partially because he learnt that the actions of his father does not reflect his worth as a person, and that he can separate how he treats others from what is happening at home.
I can tell you hundreds of stories like this. And in each one of them the person who was hurt did not realize the extent to which their pain was impacting their behaviour towards themselves and others. Seeking authenticity in isolation is a maze that many never reappear from. It is extremely difficult to engage with ourselves with the hope to change without the support of someone else. It is too easy to get lost in ourselves, and be convinced that we are somehow “better” or “cured”.
It doesn’t work that way. There is no destination where, once we arrive, we are fully who we are. The end of that journey is death, not “authenticity”. We do not find authenticity, it doesn’t find us. We choose to either seek it, to become closer to it, to know our authenticity better – or we don’t. And most of us don’t.
We don’t because of every excuse we as humans have ever concocted in order for things to stay the same. I often think about the idea that the aim of your brain is not to make you happy, it is to keep you safe. Familiar is safe.
Keeping things the same is safe. When you are a drug addict that is the life you know, it is familiar, you have a routine – it is safe.
When you are a working father who forgets your role as a parent, it is familiar, you have a routine – it is safe.
The presumption we might have that what makes us happy should also be in our best interest is wrong. What makes us happy is often not good for us, and rarely good for us in the long term. This is as true about hamburgers as it is about being entitled, selfish, lazy, or unhealthy.
So what are we? Are we what is familiar to us? Are we the driving force behind those choices? Are we the feeling of remorse or regret when we make a decision that doesn’t serve us, where we say things such as: “that’s not who I am” or, “I didn’t mean to”.
Who is that boy? Is he the boy who punched or is he the boy that’s been hurt? Or is he the boy before his father hurt him the first time? Or is he the boy who never got the opportunity to realize who he is because he was distracted by surviving in an abusive household since he could think for himself?
When did the interruption happen? When did he start living the life that is spent reacting to the interruption? Where his engagements become focused on dominating anyone other than his father to expel the lack of love waiting for him at home every night.
Maybe it’s not that simple. Maybe its not just that one choice by someone else, to rape or to hurt us, that interrupts us, diverts us off track and educates all of our emotional and social behaviour from then on as a coping mechanism. Maybe that is just part of it.
What if we aren’t one person at all, but instead a myriad of smaller identities that are educated by social and cultural forces. Are you the same with absolutely everyone? You probably aren’t. Are you less than yourself with some people and more of yourself with others? Or are you simply different versions of yourself? Are some versions true and others not?
Perhaps not. Perhaps you don’t have a personality at all. You could be a set of behaviours and your feelings are related to how well you have practiced those behaviours. How would you describe your best friend? Caring, funny, smart, but a little bit selfish sometimes? Those are personality traits, but they are also a list of social skills that anyone can practice and get better at. What if you took a person who identifies as shy, and put him in a program to help him gain confidence over time? He would be more confident, and feel better about being in certain social situations. It might even make him feel more confident about doing certain tasks. So is he confident, or did he learn to become confident? What this asks is whether our personalities are simply a mixture of things we are comfortable with and uncomfortable with because of our exposure or practice of those skills?
What if all of the above is true about us and we are a mixture of what we how we were raised, of our trauma and angst, our ability to identify areas of growth and get better and the feelings we feel when we think about these things?
Then what does it mean to be “authentic”?
I think that we are using the word as something we would like to be, and that we are aware when we are being dishonest about ourselves. We know when we are wearing our well tailored masks at the office. We know how tiring it is when we feel like the choices we are making are not for ourselves but for the comfort of others. We know when we are biting our tongue. We know when we have to be politically correct rather than share what we really think about something. We know when we are lying about who we are and pretending to be happy doing it – to me, that is being inauthentic. When the ritual of being “nice” or “professional” becomes a trap, and we forget how to actually be ourselves.
I also think that authenticity is a fantasy. When someone who has worked the same job for twenty years wakes up and says: “This is not my life.” This existential crisis is the conflict derived from his lack of authenticity. Because his realization is immediately obvious as a lie, it is his life and once upon a time he most likely couldn’t wait to start exactly the life he now says isn’t his. Maybe his motivation changed. Twenty years ago his focus was on financial security, a home, a wife or family, and he got all of those things. In the process of getting those things he had to make sacrifices. He had to want things he didn’t care about and he needed to make compromises to keep his life the way it was. He, the idea of who wants to be, got sidelined because of the idea of who he should, could, or must be to live a happy life. Now that he has that life, for good or for bad, he is realizing that actually the fantasy of what he wanted was not authentically his (although it was) and that he wants to change the story. He has changed the fantasy of who he thinks he is and now wants to make that fantasy a reality. So, in this way, who we authentically are is as much about who we think we are as it is about who we want to be and what we think will make us happy.
