The Myth of the True Self

The Myth of the True Self

I’ve been chewing on this idea of a “true self” lately, and not just in the abstract. A close friend of mine—twelve years of history—burned me in a way I never saw coming. He was someone I had gone out of my way to forgive and defend, even when he slipped up. When his life was messy, I opened the door of my own business and made him a partner, trusting he’d rise to the occasion. Instead, things unraveled. He lied, he cheated, he stole. He slid back into drugs. And when the pressure mounted, the side of him I had always excused as “not the real him” turned out to be the version that acted with teeth.

That betrayal shook me, but not only because of him. It forced me to look at myself. I had crafted this calm, meditative surfer image—easygoing, steady, forgiving. But when everything blew up, I didn’t meet it with serenity. I spent a month in a simmering rage. And when it finally boiled over, I didn’t pause or breathe deeply or play the role of peacemaker. I fought back. Partly self-defense, sure, but not only that. Anger carried me. So which one is me? The patient, generous version I like to claim—or the violent, bitter one I’d rather hide?

We have this cultural reflex to say the good side is the real one. If someone gets sober, forgives, shows generosity, we celebrate it as them becoming who they “truly are.” But when someone spirals—into addiction, cruelty, corruption—we dismiss it as a distortion. That’s not the real them, we say. Psychologists would call that bias. What we think of as the “true self” almost always lines up with our own values. Religious friends will say your faith is your essence, skeptics will say your doubts are your essence. We project what we want to see.

It’s comforting to believe in the good core. It softens our failures—if I lost my temper, well, that wasn’t really me. It makes forgiveness easier—if my friend betrayed me, maybe it was his demons, not his true heart. And it keeps groups glued together, because loyalty is easier if you believe the people you love are good underneath.

But that belief also blinds us. It blinded me. I wanted so badly to believe my friend’s selfishness - a guy who cheated on his girlfriend, who would get over on anyone who wasn't watching closely - wasn’t authentic, that I ignored the potential for his character flaws to damage me, as well, until it cut too deep. And in myself, I wanted to believe the anger and violence weren’t real. But they were. They happened. Pretending otherwise doesn’t undo them.

Maybe the harder truth is that there isn’t a hidden self at all. We’re just what we do. If I was kind yesterday, that was me. If I was violent today, that’s me too. My friend’s good natured loyalty towards me, years ago, was real. But so was his recent theft and unhinged attack on my business and myself. There isn’t a seed at the center waiting to reveal itself. There’s just the trail of choices we leave behind.

That doesn’t make growth impossible. It just changes the story. Sobriety doesn’t mean you’ve finally “found yourself”—it means you’ve committed to a pattern of action, over and over, until that pattern becomes your life. Rage doesn’t mean you’ve revealed your “real” nature—it’s just one more entry in the ledger. We aren’t essence; we’re accumulation.

The myth of the true self survives because it’s useful. It helps us forgive, it helps us stay loyal, it lets us hold hope that people can change. But taken too literally, it makes us naive. Blinds us. Sometimes cruelty isn’t a mask. Sometimes kindness isn’t the “real” part. It all counts.

I don’t know if this makes me more cynical or more honest. Probably both. What I’m left with is this: we aren’t discovering some secret identity underneath it all—we’re inventing ourselves, day by day, in what we choose, in how we act. The “true self” isn’t waiting in the wings. It’s whatever we do next.