Your True Self Does Not Need “Finding”

“People who believe that the self is like an onion and their true self is its core have not spent much time in the kitchen.” — Tanya Luhrmann

I came across a quote the other day that I found both apt and inspiring. The quote is excerpted from Tanya Luhrmann’s “Aims of Education Address” given at the University of Chicago in 2003, and has to do with the glamorized inward journey of “finding oneself.” Luhrmann posits that seeking to understand other perspectives and living outwardly is a better alternative to the endless inner spelunking we often believe we need to perform in order to live a fulfilling life.

Tanya Luhrmann is a psychological anthropologist and current professor of anthropology at Stanford, as well as the author of “How God Becomes Real,” among other books. You can read her entire 2003 address here.

One of the main themes of the speech—remember, it is addressed to the University of Chicago freshman class of 2007—is that understanding others is a critical component in understanding ourselves. Luhrmann encourages us to increase our “capacity for empathy,” contextualizing empathy not as a “feel good state of squishy oneness” but an act of genuinely trying to understand another’s perspective. She describes learning to engage with others’ ideas in an empathetic way: first, to allow our natural emotional reaction to something, then step back, reserving judgment, and strive to understand. It is this process that allows us to think well, positioning us to then make decisions, form opinions, and take actions that in turn shape who we become.

It is important to think well—understand first, then judge—because, as Luhrmann says, this is “what forces us to grow and teaches us to choose and makes us who we become.” In other words, understanding ourselves does not happen in a self-discovery vacuum: learning to observe nonjudgmentally and try to understand other people and ideas is also a crucial aspect of that lifelong process of becoming who we are.

This advice may differ from what we’ve been told about “finding ourselves”: namely, that we must do so by focusing on our inner world and dissecting our feelings. If you’ve spent any time in the self-help or wellness spheres, you’ve inevitably heard the concept of the “true self.” This true self is, as I understand it anyways, a sort of elusive, all-knowing being who exists within us but at the same time is just slightly out of our reach. Our true self knows exactly what would fulfill our deepest desires, and if we can discover how to connect with the wisdom of this self—perhaps through various wellness techniques or $265 sessions with a spiritual healer—we will make decisions “aligned” with our highest potential.

This focus on a ‘true self’ has created a (potentially disempowering) narrative that “who we really are” is separate from who we currently are; therefore, we must go find out who we really are. While this narrative may contain some truth and apply to some circumstances in which we are acting against what we know is right or true (such as, for instance, living a closeted life as a gay person, or like Hermey from Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, whose real self wants to be a dentist instead of an toy-making elf), believing that we must find our true selves perpetuates a disconnection from the lives we are actually living, as who we are now. It diminishes our ability to see that we affect who we are by our daily choices and relationships, which are well within our scope of agency.

So then, what if who you really are is exactly who you have been until now? You, who have made decisions which you later deemed ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, who have been stupid and ignorant and judgmental, and still also intuitive, connected, and self-aware. The Real You, who exists not as a figurative “true self within” or, as Luhrmann calls it, “the core of an onion,” but instead as a conglomeration of your decisions and experiences, your judgments and ideas and actions. You may not have to find yourself, after all—your ‘true self’ might just be…well, you.

Luhrmann serves this very idea to us in the quote that originally drew me to her 2003 address. Here it is:

“Many young Americans think that to know themselves they need to find themselves, and they hold the naive belief that if they could just strip off everyday life like layers of an onion they would reach their true core, unadulterated by other people’s expectations and the distractions of a fast-paced world. They believe that they have a true core, an essence, and that it sits inside of them waiting to be discovered, and that once they find it they will know whether they ought to be a doctor or a lawyer or a philosophy professor. Sometimes these young people go to Europe and work their way through Mediterranean countries picking grapes, confident that their true self will emerge somewhere en route to Italy. But people who believe that the self is like an onion and their true self is its core have not spent much time in the kitchen. Peel an onion down to its core and all you will find is air. You are not an untouched core. You are and will become the sum of your commitments, your choices—moral, intellectual, and practical—they amount to much the same thing in the end. To find yourself, don’t dig under the surface of your life. Look at what you actually do, at what you come to care for, at what you fight to defend. Look at the small choices you make every day in the classroom, in the way that you read and interpret and argue, and the big choices will sort themselves out…”

Perhaps you find this sentiment quite profound, as I have: counter to what modern pop-therapy culture suggests, we are not the pure, untouched core of an onion, surrounded by layers of societal conditioning and the expectations of others.¹ Rather than a pure core, a true self within, we are a multifaceted composite of our daily decisions, our preferences and commitments, our emotional responses and actions. Try as we might, we may never find ourselves at the center of anything—and what a relief that may be.

Luhrmann urges us to not be so anxious about finding who we really are in order to make the correct choices or live out our true purpose in life. Those big decisions will work themselves out, she says—focus on your daily decisions, instead. Focus on what you care about, and what you actually do.

Luhrmann goes on to tie back in her initial point I introduced earlier: that by understanding others, we come to understand ourselves. We could even say that by understanding others, we are able to find ourselves—this is how we grow, learn what we want to choose, discover what we stand for. Our choices, our commitments, our principles—which are influenced by the lives and choices and perspectives of others—affect and create who we are.

So then, who we are is not so much a matter of peeling away layers so that we find our true self lurking beneath the surface—but of experimenting with choices, of experiencing other people, and paying attention to the little details that make up our days.

Here is Luhrmann once more on this idea:

“Whether or not God and the devil live in the details, people certainly do. Their lives are formed in the tiny fissures of the everyday, in the way they cuddle their dog and care for their car and in whether they eat cereal for breakfast..[F]rom the little details in people’s lives you can come to see the categories and principles they live by. Pay attention to the details of your life and of other lives, and learn from those details the driving passions of those lives. You will understand people more deeply; you will also, in the paradoxical mode I am advocating, come to see the world with utter uniqueness, your own.”

The idea that I do not have a true self, but will continue to create and become myself by my daily choices, conversations, and relationships is empowering. Paying attention to what I love, to what fires me up, and to what other people have to offer me is far more liberating than the notion that I must go within to discover my true passions and path. There is always a place for introspection and inward discovery, but it does not make me who I am.

I hope that you, too, find inspiration or empowerment in these ideas—and, that perhaps you experiment with abandoning the idea that there is a pristine true version of you inside that you must discover or live up to. Turn your attention, instead, to the details of your beautiful, complicated life. Focus on what you do, and how it makes you feel. Notice what you really care about and fill your time with. Seek to understand others, without layering upon your initial judgment, and learn from them. This is what will create who you are—it is a dynamic, ongoing process. Don’t get lost attempting to find your true self—continue to become the self you already are.

Maggie

1. Turns out, there are onion metaphors aplenty on the internet, including one likening the center of the onion to one’s core emotional trauma, its layers representing the complexity of emotional healing.