The Authentic Mountain

Authenticity is the story you tell about yourself after the fact. The reference points you defend are your own fabrications.

It is time to dig deep to tear apart the romantic idea that authenticity is showing up as yourself. Nobody knows what being yourself means except through the stories you tell about yourself. Here is what authenticity does: I’m this and that; hence, I showed up like this — this is a feel-good defense, a fortification of our mountain.

We are told to attain authenticity by being faithful to ourselves. There are leadership theories and self-help books to teach us how to be authentic. But there is no stored definition of that “being self” in our brains. Stories are all we’ve got, from the sandcastles to the mountains and the clouds.

It’s like turning a broken, smudgy pair of binoculars to your mountain — look at the peak, that is my perseverance, that waterfall is my kindness, that other peak is my courage. Every one of us got those. Those stories create vague reference points in our minds, and we turn to them when asked to describe our authentic selves or when our identities are threatened.

Remember A’s situation when she found out about B’s views of A’s actions? Like a well-balanced pendulum that keeps on going, her rumination swung back and forth between her views of her strengths and B’s weaknesses ... click ... clock .. click ... clock. I selflessly stepped in and worked extra hard to get the job done. I always care for others. ... B is incompetent. B is thankless. That rumination stopped only when we changed the question from “who got upset” to “what got upset,” and she realized that what got upset was her story about herself.

But there is more to this, and it can be unsettling.

Already Arrived

I once worked for a peculiar and difficult manager. I used to have vivid stories of him in my head. In one particular meeting, he kept prodding me about a decision I thought I was entitled to make. That went on for some time. I did not feel good about that episode. I felt like I was being bullied. Later in the weekend, I began journaling about it. I wrote in my journal, “Here is my story ...” and then circled the word “victim” in bold next to that paragraph. I picked up that “victim” metaphor from Shirzad Chamine’s popular self-help book, Positive Intelligence, which I read sometime before that episode. Naming what I was feeling that weekend as “victimhood” calmed me down.

I didn’t probe it harder then. I did not have to. That label “victim” on my lapel fortified my self-definition: I am genuine. I thought through my decision. I behaved according to my principles. Nothing needs to change. I’m packaged. I’m authentic.

No more probing was required. That was all that my mountain was seeking that weekend. It felt virtuous. Finding vindication, that weekend rumination ended. That’s the catch with authenticity. You are perfect as you are. Just show up accordingly — such a naive concept. You have already arrived. Nothing more to be done.

Jacob Golomb, an Israeli philosopher, characterized authenticity in In Search of Authenticity in 1995 as being faithful to scripts you have already written for yourself. David Hume, one of the most well-known 18th-century Western philosophers, was more brutal when he called the self a “bundle of perceptions” that we can creatively mould in any way we like. That bundle includes memories, thoughts, emotions, and impressions. Hume’s view in the 1700s is similar to the Yogācāra view of the mind, ālaya-vijñāna, a storehouse of seeds of accumulated past impressions and habits.

Authenticity is not the starting point of our behaviors. It is a post hoc label we use to explain and defend our behavior. Such labeling builds an immune system. It makes the mountain a hero. A quick etymological search shows that the word “authenticity” is derived from the Greek word “authentikos,” which means killer, murderer, acting on one’s own, and hence not answerable to anyone. Over centuries, that definition morphed into a virtue.

When authenticity is nothing but post hoc labeling, the situation has already paid the price. My “victim” lapel stopped me from probing further. A’s label kept her pendulum swinging. It can be, and should be, unsettling to come to terms with the realization that authenticity is labeling.

There is no pure inner self to be faithful to. So, the instruction to be authentic has no fixed referent. The belief that authenticity is good rests on a hope that there is an inner guide that uniquely defines each of us. There isn’t one.

A few weeks ago, on a flight from San Jose, I accidentally nudged the seat in front of me. I didn’t notice it immediately, but there was a pregnant woman in that seat. A male sitting next to her got upset and gave me a look. I returned a similar look and felt vindicated. But what happened to my self-definition of being kind? Instead, a stored default behavior, anger, defined my behavior. My authentic self was nowhere to be found.

Nowhere to be Found

Was I being inauthentic on the flight? Or was I being unaware? In the moment, returning a look showed strength and yielded vindication. The right response was an apology to the couple. For that, I needed to give up my scripts about what standing up for myself looks like. I needed to be present, instead. But my scripts obscured presence. Golomb pointed to Jean-Paul Sartre, the French philosopher, who mused about authenticity as “having a true and lucid consciousness of the situation.” Had I been present, I would have substituted my look with an apology.

Naming victimhood over a weekend years ago calmed me down. I felt vindicated, and my mountain was protected. I also felt understood — I had a label to describe myself in that situation. Had I probed harder, I would have discovered some root-cause stories and been curious about what my manager was seeing. I would have seen what I helped A see — that what got upset was the story about herself. Labeling myself prevented that insight.

The search for authenticity obscures our vision. The reference points we want to see on the mountain are our defensive mechanisms. Ah - there is your perseverance peak, your kindness waterfall, and your courage peak. You arrived, authentic and fully packaged. No probing required. Let this unsettling feeling stay for a while.