We did NOT wake up one day thinking:
''Hey, I have an idea, let me lie to myself and everyone I love, I bet it's a winning strategy !''
Instead, we grew up trying to figure out how to be in the world, we didn't have the manual. For everything we tried that didn't quite work out, we thought we needed to BE different.
Slowly but surely, we invented a self that we estimated had a better chance of survival than our raw, fragile, clueless self.
We started hiding our emotions, our vulnerabilities, our not-knowing, our hesitations.
We started to withhold love.
We started to trade love for safety or attention.
We started to pre-empt attacks, by attacking others or putting ourselves down.
We started saying those polite things, those half-baked truths, those white lies.
We started smoothing the edges to preserve the harmony.
We started hiding our pain, we wouldn't be caught dead sweating it.
We started saying things we didn't mean, and mean things we didn't say.
We started fighting for, or to escape control.
We started to believe that who we are cannot survive in this world.
The starts became habits, became our normal.
And then the habits and the normal became our truth.
We started believing our own story, the one whereby our true self is inadequate, and our invented self is a better idea, and therefore we must be our invented self, and if we're not we're going to die.
Because that's what it means, when we think we can't survive as our natural selves.
That invented self that we must be or die, our public identity, our guideline, our crutch, the thing that we hold to be right and necessary as the optimal version of ourself.
We play the script, and continue to believe that how it plays out is our best option.
To some extent it works. To some extent, we are confirmed time and again that the world is hostile and that our raw, fragile, clueless self would be eaten alive.
Except we feel disconnected from others, from the people we love.
We don't feel seen or understood.
We feel feel fake, unreal.
We feel wronged, let down, alone.
We feel too much or not enough.
We feel that whatever we do, we can't quite get it right.
There is a bit of that of course.
But much more than plain intent to deceive, it is about denial, delusion, pretence, withholding, armour, or in short, self-smothering.
When I think about ''who I am''...
Do the answers feel like pressure, or self-satisfied?
or do they feel good, inspiring?
Are there traits or habits of mine I try to conceal, that I believe would change how people see me?
I may not know who I am, but am I willing to find out?
If so, I can go through the day observing my response to life, my ways to be, and spot the ones that feel like who I like to be, and then choose to do more of that?