In my review of Alice Munro's 'Dear Life' (7/7/16), I described a story in which a young girl has thoughts of strangling her younger sister. This is kind of an extreme case, but it makes the point that sometimes each of us has thoughts that we would just as soon not have, and which seem unworthy. How many of us, upon hearing that a friend just got a promotion, feel at the same time happy for the friend but also just a little bit jealous? Upon hearing about a sexual scandal involving an otherwise forthright high official, how many of us feel both sad to see his downfall, but also titillated by the glimpse of his private life? I bring this up because it bears on the topic of being true to yourself. Adam Grant had an interesting piece in the New York Times with the provocative title, "Unless you're Oprah, 'Be Yourself' is terrible advice" (June 4, 2016). He makes the point that being authentic can get you into trouble. There might not be a happy outcome, for instance, to expressing your authentic feeling to the in-laws that their conversation is boring, or telling a colleague that you would try to sleep with her if you were younger and single.
Grant emphasizes the social hazards of being authentic. To me, it goes deeper than that. We each have mixed thoughts, some desirable, some not so much. When Shakespeare has Polonius advise his son Laertes 'To thine own self be true.', the question is: to which self should one be true? To the part of oneself that is happy at a friend's promotion, or the part that is a bit jealous? The answer Grant suggests is to follow the advice of Lionel Trilling, the literary critic and teacher whose 1972 book 'Authenticity and sincerity' offered an alternative. Rather than being authentic (focusing on discovering and expressing oneself), he suggests that we try to understand how we present ourselves to the world, and then strive to be sincere-- to try to make our behavior consistent with how we would like others to see us. As Grant phrases it, instead of trying to bring our inner world outside, we might benefit from bringing our outer world inside. It goes deeper than being a way of staying out of trouble, emphasizing instead trying to live up to our better selves, the way we would like others to see us. It is such good advice that it seemed worthy of repeating here.
