Getting Real

Perhaps the fine art of inauthenticity is but a learned cultural trait instilled in those earliest years as a way for young souls to navigate life beyond. J. D. Salinger’s Holden Caulfield in The Catcher In The Rye repeatedly condemns “phonies” as people who fake it to fit into adult society as he criticizes teachers, peers, actors, and even magazines for superficiality and conformity. His fixation as the “catcher” is to save kids from phony cliff-edge adulthood.

That plunge to adulthood might end for some with the so-called imposter syndrome, the feeling of being a fake or a phony despite all of one’s accomplishments. It can show up in the context of work, relationships, or whatever else that holds one back from the self-confidence one objectively deserves.

The phenomenon is probably more pervasive than it appears. As a very young attorney, just setting out in the corporate world, mid-way through a session with a senior executive, came a disquieting notion that the outward confidence I was projecting on the outside was at odds with a certain tentativeness I was feeling on the inside. He probably picked up on it when he smiled and said, “Now, don’t go bullshitting a bullshitter.” Point taken. Perhaps it was an acknowledgement that the whole corporate world was itself a stage on which we’re all actors.

A truth of one’s authenticity might be revealed through those passing daydreams of what we’d rather be – some fleeting ambition to be something else, to be someone else, to leap out of the interminable self and the life sentence of the mirror and into another skin, another life.

The projection of a false self to the outside world is one thing; the matter goes to another level when the object of the “bullshit” is oneself. The discussion article (click: The Rare People Who Are Solid) describes the quality of congruence, a state of unity between one’s experience, self-concept and outward behavior.

In other words, deep congruence is a kind of radical authenticity in which you disown none of your experience, none of it, including the emotions of you and the people around you, and “accept the stubborn approach of death, the arbitrariness of your fortune, your unimportance on the cosmic timescale.“

Good luck with that as one is challenged to overcome the burden of the incongruence instilled throughout those formative years as a survival skill, adapting to and taking on the expectations of parents and society. Such a locked-in persona can be difficult to pierce, especially when it comes to relationships: perhaps consider this totally unscientific observation that a shortcut prediction about the prospects of a pending marriage is to imagine the dynamic between the mother of the bride and the father of the groom.

The true congruence that comes from an inner authority can’t be faked e.g. dead-eyed hippie warmth, narcissistic charm, certain wanna-be disciples of a guru. Be also prepared for the pain of authenticity as you reframe the fiction of your past.

One suggested test for congruence is through an assessment of one’s comfort with boredom, whether it evokes a feeling of peace rather than a flailing against the silence. It brings to mind Blaise Pascal’s observation that, “the sole cause of man’s unhappiness is that he doesn’t know how to stay quietly in his room.”

The good news is that congruence may finally be found as a deathbed enlightenment as one is on the precipice of that ultimate silence with nothing left to prove.

Please note the following RSVP Policy for Member Monday: RSVP sign-up opens up at 11:00am on Fridays via the City Club weekly Newsletter. Seats are first-come, first-served: the first 14 secure a spot at the table, the last 3 on the couch. Cancellations must be made 24 hours in advance or the standard Social Lunch rate applies.