Charlene, who sings "I've Never Been to Me" (at the top of this page), tries to find herself through wild adventures (OK, mild adventures) traveling the world – but being off on her own doesn't seem to do the trick. In the end, she finds herself here:

Hey, you know what paradise is? It's a lie. A fantasy we create about
People and places as we'd like them to be. But you know what truth is?
It's that little baby you're holding, and it's that man you fought with
This morning, the same one you're going to make love with tonight.
That's truth, that's love

For Charlene (or, rather, the character she's playing) happiness can be found at home. It comes from finding her place in her family.

Going Home to You

Many developed societies present people with conflicting values. On the one hand, they encourage individualism and the pursuit of personal goals. Adventure, success and personal achievement are seen as keys to fulfilling the "American dream." At the same time, forging your own path can be lonely. Finding a place to fit in – friendship, family, and belonging – are also important values. It is possible to balance these competing goals, but it's not always easy, and people frequently have to compromise and sacrifice to make both of them happen.

When people pursue one of these goals at the expense of the other, the result can be a feeling of incompleteness or falseness – and this often gets translated as a lack of an "authentic self."

The Great or Terrible Thing about Living in the Developed World

Here's a real first-world problem: it can be hard to find meaning in life.

This is a new problem in human history. For most of our collective past, simply surviving – and providing for your loved ones – was challenging enough. In this day and age, depending on how you look at it, many people are either lucky enough or unfortunate enough to have moved beyond that. The fact that many of us are relatively secure in our futures means that the old, primary source of meaning in life isn't really an issue anymore.

For many people in our diverse societies, living life for the Glory of God isn't a realistic goal, either.

And we haven't found a really good replacement.

Closing more deals than anyone else at the office this year? Great. Becoming really good at the cello? Finishing that novel that's been buried in your laptop all these years? These are all worthwhile goals – but from a psychological perspective, they don't really compare to, say, surviving the winter of 1619-1620 in that clearing near Plymouth Rock, or nursing your family through Black Plague.

This befuddlement of meaning can also lead to a sense that life is not authentic. Depending on your perspective, this may or may not be a small price to pay.

A New You

At times, things that seemed satisfying – work, hobbies, relationships – slowly become less attractive, not because anything in particular changed about them, or because the novelty wore off, but because you changed to become a slightly different person – one who just wasn't interested in being a baker or climbing all the fourteeners in the continental US.

While changes in identities are entirely normal and natural responses to living life, many people have the idea that they have an inner essence that isn't supposed to change. Instead of seeing evolution as natural and disaffection as part of evolution, the idea that there is an inner self that used to like something but doesn't any more leads people to conclude that there's something wrong with that inner self. And this often gets labeled as a lack of authenticity.

So there are many reasons that a person could feel inauthentic.

What to Do if You Don't Feel Authentic

That feeling of disconnection can be very real for many people. Probably the most important point to realize – and this is supported by a great deal of academic research, counterintuitive as it may seem – is that there is no such thing as an authentic self.[2]

We change as we move from one context to the next. People have multiple selves that they bring out throughout the course of the day: the work-you is probably different from the family-you, which is also somewhat unlike the internet-you, the church-you, the talking-with-your-mom-you, and so forth.

As time goes by, we edit and revise those senses of self – you become more skilled in your specialization at work, or you begin to see the contradictions in your field and begin to lose faith in it. The way you interact with your family may challenge your sense of yourself as a religious person and cause that identity to evolve.

That said, you can't just choose a new you to add to the collection. Identities are built up over years of experience, and, for the most part, each identity does something helpful – or, at least, it did at one time. Diving in and trying to change your identity, like a middle school kid trying our new attitudes and clothes, isn't usually the best idea. For that matter, in spite of what the self-help gurus say, it often isn't very effective.[3]

And, often, disrupting one identity will knock the others off balance.

Instead of seeking the one true, proper, correct way to be, the best way to deal with a sense that you're not living an authentic life is to think about what's going on with your senses of self. Are you dealing with value systems that contradict each other, divided, for example, between pursuing individual goals and being part of a family or community? Have your ideas about your work or your relationships changed so that the old versions of yourself that worked well aren't doing the trick anymore?

Humans are complicated creatures. It's the complexity that gives rise to our adaptability and flexibility – and while it complicates life, it makes it very much worth living.

As I say on so many of these pages, it's not my goal to provide answers – instead, I want to help you find ways to think about your questions from a useful, intelligent angle. So instead of asking, "Who am I?" it might be useful to ask, "Who have I been?" and "Who am I in different parts of my life?" and "How do my different identities fit together?"

 

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[1] Charlene, "I've Never Been to Me"

[2] See, for example:

Bourdieu, Pierre

1977 Outline of a Theory of Practice. R. Nice, trans. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Foucault, Michel

1976[1975] Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. A. Sheridan, trans. New York: Vintage Books.

Holland, Dorothy, William Lachiotte Jr., Debra Skinner, and Carole Cain

1998 Identity and Agency in Cultural Worlds. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Kondo, Dorinne

1990 Crafting Selves: Power, Gender, and Discourses of Identity in a Japanese Workplace. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.

And many, many others. This realization is pretty much everywhere in the social sciences and humanities in the 21^st century.

[3] Although sometimes it may be necessary if your habits are dangerous.