There is an entire cottage industry dedicated to helping people find their authentic self, to connect to their inner emotions and true visions. Maybe I should go and check to see if this is true, or whether I am laying down a platitude. Yep, just checked. Just saw an ad for meeting your authentic self in a webinar over Zoom. Strangely enough it is from 2018, when Zoom was a new thing, so I guess we are late for that one, but also, based on my experience with Zoom, meeting my authentic self might lead to hellacious echo and feedback. Anyway, so there are a lot of people out there who are selling seminars, retreats, classes, courses, books, workshops, all so we can somehow find that elusive sense of authentic self. And if we look at the economics of these courses, and the literacy needed to deal with the concepts, they are not remedial resources given to non-functional people. Somehow, there are a group of people who are functioning, and even excelling members of society, who are making lots of money and navigating a complicated global society, that are clueless about who they are and what they want.
And this is all mystifying to me, because I am quite aware of who I am and what I want, and that has been true pretty much my entire life. Also, honestly, the things I like haven't changed too much since I was a kid. My authentic self likes light reading, eating junk food, and going for long walks. Just about anything can spark creativity. I don't feel hollow or empty inside. My authentic self, basically, can find itself confined in a nutshell, and be the king of infinite space. I can ask my authentic self what it wants to do tomorrow, and it has already told me: "photographing mushrooms while eating peanut M&Ms" and I can just imagine the texture of the experience. So my authentic self---that is cool.
But my inauthentic self? I need to get hooked up with that dude. No, not like that. While my authentic self and me are sitting around, reading comic books and eating Dollar Tree cookies, that inauthentic self is sitting in a conference room, taking literal notes on someone's powerpoint presentation, and getting paid for it. That inauthentic self, like me, has a Master's Degree and years of professional experience, but instead of sitting in front of a computer screen doing gig economy work, that inauthentic self has a managerial job where they are getting paid lots of money to produce intangibles. And to believe that he is doing something very important, when he spends an hour at the pre-meeting for the meeting of the Interdepartmental Group on Knowledge Leadership, discussing what font we all need to use for the slides. My inauthentic self slides out of work and goes to restaurants and bars, letting that hard earned money flow out just as quickly as he unironnically believes that a $20 sandwich is better than a box of triscuits and store band pop. Work and society are an ocean he swims easily in, never realizing that they might not always be there. He will think he is poor when having to pay 5 types of insurance means he has to take a domestic vacation this year. And if my inauthentic self makes some faux pas, he will laugh and shrug it off because he knows when he can bend and break rules. He lives in a life free of consequences, he worries about his place in the world and he struggles to find...his authentic self, who is me. Maybe we can meet over a zoom seminar, and I can take his money and give him some simple advice, like how to enjoy a box of triscuits and the cold feeling of a park bench on a drizzly November day.