Why you can never simply “be yourself”

Would you say your true identity is closer to the way you introduce yourself during an interview, or rather to the way you see yourself in the reflection of the TV screen on a lazy Sunday binge, in boxer shorts, a bbq sauce smudge on the Star Wars t-shirt, one leg up on the wall?

None of them? Both?

The real issue here is the fact that neither can comprise quite the complexity of your thoughts, the intricacy of your emotions, the way your lungs fill before a big moment. They’re just images. Even if you’d stick them all together - the image of the boy your mother raised, the one of the husband your wife loves, the father your daughter admires, the tired bbq sauce dude in front of the TV, and all the other hundreds of sides of you, there’d still be something missing. You’re not them. They’re not really, truly, fully … you.

Jacques Lacan, one the most influential psychoanalysts in history (if you’re into psychology and/or philosophy, look him up if you haven’t already) makes the following vexing claim:

“Our identity is an image underneath which we truly reside”

Read that again.

To support this, he (really simply put) uses concepts like Desire, the ambivalence of the self from within and the one for the others, and the Mirror Stage. Let’s break them up and put them back together real’ quick, starting from the latter to the first (’cause why not).

The Mirror Stage is represented by the confusing moment of literally seeing ourselves in the mirror for the first time and realizing, to our understandable shock, that the world can’t see us for what we really are and all the load we feel. Instead, we seem to be perceived by the others around, as this pile of meat with foldable and bendable parts, hair, skin, and weirdly coloured bits. This could never truly express what we are, but even after gaining linguistic abilities, these two are still not enough to be seen and understood by the world — which is one of the fundamental desires of humankind.

To cope with this, says Lacan, we make a distinction between the “id” — our unconscious, wild, real self — and the “ego” — the identity we create in order to make sense of our self and our universe. Lacan calls this exterior self — The Small Other.

The Big Other represents the culture we’re born in, the norms and context, the world around us. Before we’re even able to introduce ourselves, we are identified as our nationalities, our financial status & so on.

But as much as your environment influences you, it isn’t … you.

So we make up an image of ourselves according to what we know about our needs, desires, abilities, social norms & expectations, societal values & all other kinds of concepts we may not even agree with. And because most of this comes from the outside, we tend to look for examples of people who have it all figured out. So we turn to celebrities. They look fine, happy, and sure about their identity. Right?

We aspire to be them, to do what they’re doing, to go on the same types of holidays, to own the same cars, dresses, or pets, out of a silly need to fill a gap that stands between us and our own true complete self. But the brain is stupid.

Due to an evolutionary need to become better and acquire more, as we obtain the object of desire, the wants change inside us, to chase a desire out of what we have control over. This takes us on a neverending trial of being a bit smarter, a bit richer, a bit more informed on this topic, buying our own house, having our first child. After this challenge, we’ll really be ourselves- completely. Just this next thing, then we could really be this polished version of us we promote so loudly to the others and to our own selves.

We’re living a life as if we’re being watched by someone constantly, trying to fulfill the story of this Small Other (the character we play), in the context laid by the Big Other, as if we’re on a stage (this is called the Gaze Masquerade), constantly chasing the thing which will make us whole.

Nothing ever will.

None of us ever feel complete. It’s okay to feel this way. We all do. Stop running towards yourself. Have a mug of tea. Slow down.