A Note on Personal Essence and Authenticity
I’m looking for inspiration to my left and right in hopes that my gaze will fall on an object or an idea that perfectly encapsulates who I am. The clothes rack in the hallway is looking right back at me. Is it the leather jacket that I’ve been wearing for years, which always makes me feel like I’m putting on another layer of myself? Is it the crazy pair of unconventional boots with buckles which look heavily BDSM-inspired and strangely enough make me feel so confident? Or is it maybe that one song I can start singing out of the blue no matter what mood I’m in? There must be something consistent that’s stayed with me all these years, no matter how much I might have changed, like a personal essence of some sort. Something that would make me look and feel strange if it suddenly disappeared. As much as I’m trying to think of something that would be noticeable not just to myself but others too, I realise the impossibility of my task. Because as soon as you ask yourself what you have to lack in order to stop being you, you realise you’re made up of endless amounts of little quirks and interests and characteristics. It’s about more than just your wardrobe and personal style, your signature hair colour or facial piercings. Of course visual changes are easier to detect than internal changes, but even then, it’s not like you change as a person just because your hair does, right?
The issue that you stumble across when trying to find out what you need to lack in order to lose yourself is that it suddenly becomes harder to figure out whether there’s really anything authentic about us at all. Pinpointing what the self actually is has been a task in both philosophy and psychology, which has also led many philosophers to the quest of defining what it means to live authentically. Simone de Beauvoir talked about the duality of our own nature, for example being an object and a subject at the same time, while her and Sartre are also notorious for their theory about how some people live in “bad faith”. This means that they fully submit to the societal role they’ve been given to the point where they adopt its values instead of living according to their own. Freud tried to dissect a human’s personality or psyche by dividing it into three categories, which he named the Id (instincts), Ego (reality), and Superego (morality), whereas German philosopher Heidegger was concerned with authenticity and what it means to be a Dasein in this material world. All of them touch upon the issue of trying to understand what makes a person and if there’s a personal essence that perseveres throughout time while our body changes. Heidegger believed that if we’d be self-aware of our own being, where we stand in proportion to the world and ourselves, it might make it easier for us to live authentically, and some might even argue, more morally.
A better question to ask in order to find out about our authentic selves should probably sound more like something along the lines of “Who would you be if you’d lack everything that you think is you?” It’s not too uncommon to hear someone describe themselves as their job role or title, as if work is all that defines them. In other examples where it’s not workers simply identifying as workers, we can also find full-time parents, completely submitting to their new role while neglecting everything else in their lives that used to make them who they are. Of course you can’t blame anyone for living in bad faith when we’re in fact being encouraged to be ambitious about our jobs and aim high for a title that we delude ourselves to think defines us. It’s like we think lesser of ourselves if we don’t aim high, and some of us are willing to reach the highest point of the ladder at the expense of things that actually matter to us: family, friends, hobbies, and anything else that doesn’t give us productive or financial value, but simply happiness instead. Other people might attach their identity to their partner, either becoming the person they’re with or submitting to the role of being second and relying on codependency in order to exist at all. So what happens when we lose our job? When someone breaks up with us or wants a divorce? What is left of the athlete who suffered an injury that prevents him from ever performing again? Who is the musician when he stops making music? All of these are questions to ask yourself in the quest to find out who you truly are, because the person that lies underneath all of our layers of societal perception, our own deception and superficial values is probably the closest to defining who we are at the core.
Falling into a monotone, everyday mode of existence without living purposefully and attentively is another way of living inauthentically. Heidegger described this everyday way of being as they (Das Man - inauthentic self), which is everyone and no one, as it is about a Dasein (= a being that identifies the freedom of choice within the facticity that we’re also thrown into the world, consequently being a product of time, culture and place) that has lost his own self. To live as an inauthentic self means to adopt the same trends, political and social views, expressions and behaviours of what catches our attention in our everyday mode, whereas a Dasein doesn’t reduce his genuine possibilities and resources available to him to become the most authentic self he can be. Floating through life as a they might feel comfortable and create the illusion that all is well, but there is something missing, something fundamental to creating an authentic and fulfilled self. Something that yet needs to be discovered.
The somewhat consoling aspect of this judgement of inauthentic selves is that Heidegger didn’t believe it should take a lot of soul searching and meditation to find one’s inner truth. It’s more about shifting our attention elsewhere, and changing the way that we engage with the world. He explained in his philosophical theories that Dasein is about exactly what makes us human, which is to attentively engage with the world, see its resources rather as tools instead of mere objects. A hammer could be seen as just a product of time and human evolution, but a Dasein recognises its possibilities and usefulness. This doesn’t mean that everyone should go and build a birdhouse the second they spot a hammer, but it serves as a metaphor for how we should see and use the world around us. In addition to changing the way we engage with the world, becoming a Dasein is also about connecting with our own conscience. In this philosophical theory, it’s not necessarily about our moral conscience, but rather about finding a clear voice that tells us about our unique aptitudes and capabilities. Heidegger was also a big fan of using our own mortality and awareness of death as a tool to connect with that inner voice. The certainty of death isn’t meant to stress us out in any way, but Heidegger believed that if we act according to the reality that, in his own words “As soon as man comes to life, he is at once old enough to die”, we will be more capable of prioritising our own values and acting according to our truth. In the face of death, the importance of our own needs and desires and truths suddenly becomes a little clearer. So the last questions I’m going to ask are the following: How would you live if you were actually immortal? And what are the differences between that and the way you live now? What do you think needs changing in order to live your most authentic life as a person you can truthfully stand behind?
