BECOME WHO YOU ARE by Kurt Keefner

A guest post by Kurt Keefner

Become Who You Are

In my forthcoming book Killing Cool I write about a personality type I call the Pretender.  What Pretenders pretend is a sense of life, a sensibility which they paste over their real thoughts and feelings in an attempt to become something they are not.  It’s an all too common problem that can be seen in hipsters and politicians alike.

We need a healthy alternative to Pretenderism.  That alternative is authenticity.  Authenticity means acting from a centered position and being open to feeling and experience.  It means not adopting beliefs that don’t make deep sense to you and it means never pasting on a sense of life rather than exploring life’s possibilities in a heartfelt way.  The authentic person puts his perception of reality and other people ahead of any attempt to titillate himself.

Authenticity, in the sense I use the word, does not mean embracing subjectivism or doing whatever you feel like or seeking the latest consumer good to express your “individuality.”  Authenticity carries the burden of independent thought and action. The media create ready-made sense of life feelings that people can slip into.  One must not buy into their presentation of the world (or the Church’s or the government’s).  Of course we cannot do away with the media, but we can use them less and use them more wisely.

The best example of an authentic person I can come up with is fictional:  Atticus Finch from To Kill a Mockingbird (a novel and a film which tell the story of how Atticus’ children grow out of being little Pretenders).   Note how Atticus is serious yet affectionate.  When he tells his daughter Scout how important it is to learn to climb into another person’s skin and walk around in it, he is giving her the antidote to Pretenderism, which regards other people as little more than characters in one’s favorite story.

I can describe the authentic type.  Maybe one of your teachers or a friend or your doctor or someone else you know fits the bill.

The authentic person, whether he is naturally quick or languid, is not hyped or bored.  He takes responsibility for the things that go on in his head, and his sense of humor is not inappropriate or mean, and he never tries to score off of other people. The authentic person is fundamentally characterized by the fact that reality and other people are real to him and are not just the setting for and characters in his fantasy narrative.  As a result the authentic person always seems “present.”

It might be tempting sometimes to make a fetish of authenticity and build a new form of Pretenderism around it, with “It’s Hip to be a Square” as its anthem and Oprah as its favorite TV show.   But authenticity isn’t something you adopt; it’s what happens when you focus on where you are.  Some forms of meditation go so far as to ask that you concentrate on your breathing as a way of being mindful, but such measures are probably only necessary measure only in extreme cases of the syndrome.  For most people it seems sufficient to unpack one’s sincere felt sense of one’s situation and exploring one’s cultural, as well as physical, environment. 

No doubt all educated people would like to believe that they are open to experience and that they explore their environment.  But if the exploration gets no farther than a rerun of Fargo or this week’s installment of True Blood, then we still have a problem.  Building on what’s healthy in Western civilization, from Shakespeare to the Beatles, the authentic person will naturally find better things in both popular and high culture.  He will probably be a happier person as well and less dangerous to himself and society. 

I am convinced that for most people reality is an undiscovered country, full of wonders.  Green valleys and rugged mountains and cathedrals and skyscrapers are just waiting to be found and investigated.  But to see them, to feel them, to be them, one must give up the addiction to Pretenderism that stands between one and reality.  Ultimately, it’s a matter of natural growth versus an artificial personality.  Fortunately, we all have it within us to become who we are.

Kurt Keefner is a writer and teacher who studied philosophy at the University of Chicago.   His most recent publication was an essay entitled "Free Will: A Response to Sam Harris," available for download on Amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00869S35Q.

He is currently working on a book called Killing Cool, which is about combatting the false self and finding true awareness.  It will probably be published in early 2013.  He lives just outside Washington, DC, with his wife, the author Stephanie Allen.  You can visit his blog at http://www.kurtkeefner.com.