Like Manilow, we all find it hard to be ourselves
IN a week that saw Barry Manilow come out of the closet (I didn’t know he was in there), and the publication of the floridly Photoshopped official portrait of US First Lady Melania Trump, it appears it’s getting harder and harder to be authentic. But then, appearances can be deceiving. The Greek root of the word, “authentikos”, means “acting on one’s own authority”. So, one might ask, on whose authority was Manilow acting when he felt compelled to mask his sexuality (until last week) and keep secret for nearly 40 years the fact that he was in a romantic relationship with his manager (now husband), Garry Kief? And which bit of Melania Trump wanted her portrait to be airbrushed in such a way that it neutralised everything in her that could be construed as real, human and, therefore, imperfect? Therein lies a clue: although human beings are the personification of imperfection, it still doesn’t stop us from pretending that we are (or could be) perfect. Whole industries have been spawned on this reality-resistant fantasy – cosmetics, health and wellbeing, self-improvement, not to mention the cults, the corporates and the snake-oil gurus who promise to show us how to achieve the perfect life, with perfect furniture and kids to match. So alluring, so smoke-and-mirrors but still, we poor wee timorous beasties keep our faith in the stories we concoct and live by. We all lie to ourselves a bit. The human mind is so plastic that it enables us to be both deceiver and deceived and, let’s face it, sometimes a little bit of self-enhancement is just what the doctor ordered. We all, at some stage or another, are quite capable of justifying and rationalising things in order to cope, to get ahead, or simply boost our confidence by telling ourselves stories like: “I definitely deserve to get that job because I’m the cleverest/best qualified/best potential.” But somewhere along this same spectrum, self-deception such as “I know my partner is sometimes violent
towards me, but, deep down, he/she really loves me”, is potentially mind-bending, if not dangerous. It’s a tricky business. Sometimes it actually protects us, like bubble wrap for the ego, until we are robust enough to see and feel how we really are, how it really is in the raw. At other times, the lack of, or suppression of an authentic self makes us vulnerable to people-pleasing, to spending money we don’t actually have, to lying to others about our achievements or status, staying in careers that don’t suit us and marriages that don’t work, and to becoming whatever we think folk need or want us to be.
Barry Manilow felt he needed to keep quiet about being gay for fear his largely female, middle-aged audiences would reject him. Given that he was born in an era when you could get thrown in jail for being gay, perhaps his fears were justified.
The fine line between living in the brutal, fluorescent light of realism and the soft focus of a confected version of reality is hard to tread. The former is
Although humans are the personification of imperfection, it doesn’t stop us from pretending that we are (or could be) perfect
closer to reality, but encases us in the kind of depressive realism that can make living a bleak and tortuous experience. This kind of world is neither paradise nor hell, but just the place in which we find ourselves. It’s a hard world to be in. But the soft-focus, airbrushed version of reality harbours its own kind of bleakness in that it is not real and therefore lacks meaning and truth.
Think of The Emperor’s New Clothes and how easily madness took hold of both him and his followers.
Being inauthentic is also hard work because it demands that we keep up the facade we have constructed, regardless of how we’re actually feeling and thinking. Ultimately, this is stressful because we can never let go and truly relax, even when we are alone. Sometimes, the stories we weave are so long and complex that we find ourselves lost, unable to find a way back. We end up living the lie until it becomes the official version of the truth.
The trick is to keep hoping, cherish our human bias for optimism but keep it anchored in such a way that when the waters gets choppy we are not swept away and lost at sea. To be and stay authentic, we need to nurture self-awareness, really listen to ourselves and others, and understand that being perfect is much overrated. Val Burns is a psychotherapist, living and working in Glasgow email: valbrns@yahoo.co.uk