Recently we reposted Immanuel Can’s exploration of what it means to be “authentic”. IC raised a couple of very important questions:
“What does ‘authentic’ mean when you already admit you don’t even know who you are? How on earth do you find such a thing, and what happens when you can’t?”
The search for identity is not a new one. The
Woodstock generation called it “finding yourself”. But what IS “me” exactly?
Clairol, for instance, tells us their hair dye “lets me be me”, when by its very
design it does precisely the opposite: it lets me be the version of me that I
used to be before my hair turned grey. I’m not using it to be “me”, I’m using
it to pretend I’m not getting older.
That’s not authentic at all, is it?