Some time ago, while tidying up, I came across an old sheet of paper on which I had once written down what I wanted to achieve in my life. Some of it had come true, some had long since become meaningless, and some of it read like the description of a person I can barely recognise in myself today. What stayed with me, though, was not the question of how much I had changed. It was something else. I looked at those old wishes and wondered how many of them had genuinely come from me. How many had I pursued because they moved something within me, and how many because they fitted an idea of what a successful life was supposed to look like? The thought stayed with me. At some point, it formed itself into a sentence that almost sounded as though one part of me were speaking to another: You never really looked for me. You looked for answers, for certainty, for a place in the world. But did you ever truly look for me?
The sentence was uncomfortable because I had always thought of myself as someone who was searching. Since my youth, I have been occupied by questions of spirituality, consciousness, perception and what lies beneath the surface of our lives. I have read, observed, experienced, discarded and asked again. It would have been easy to conclude that, naturally, I had also been searching for myself. But the longer I thought about it, the less certain I became. Searching can take many forms. I can search for explanations that tell me why I am the way I am. I can search for methods that are meant to change me. I can search for people who confirm that the path I am on is the right one. I can search for a version of myself that I like better than the person who is actually here. All of that can feel like self-discovery, while perhaps I am only circling further and further around myself.
I see this most clearly in the question of who I wanted to be. For a long time, identity seemed to me like something that had to be found. Surely somewhere there had to be this real self, hidden beneath experience, expectations and conditioning. If I only looked deeply enough, I would eventually come across it. Today, I am no longer sure that it works that way. What if I am already carrying an idea of whom I want to find before I even begin the search? Someone calmer, freer, braver, more spiritual, someone who doubts less and is more at ease with themselves. Then I am no longer searching openly. I am searching myself for evidence of an ideal. Everything that does not fit it quickly becomes something that still needs to be worked on, healed or overcome.
That revealed to me a peculiar side of personal development. It can very quickly become a polite form of rejecting the life I am actually living in the present. I want to grow, understand myself and become more conscious, yet beneath that wish there can be a quiet assumption that, as I am now, I am still not enough. Then every inner issue becomes the next project. A fear has to disappear. An uncertainty has to be resolved. An old pattern must finally stop. Of course there are things I want to change, and I see nothing wrong in that. But I have found in my own experience that change feels different when it no longer comes from a constant dissatisfaction with myself. It makes a difference whether I want to get to know something within me or get rid of it as quickly as possible.
Perhaps that is why, for a long time, I searched more for explanations than for myself. An explanation creates order. It tells me where a behaviour comes from, what pattern lies behind it and why I reacted the way I did in a particular situation. That can be very helpful. But at some point, I noticed that I could explain myself extremely well and still overlook myself. I knew why I had failed to set a boundary, yet I continued not to set it. I understood why something had hurt me and still barely allowed myself to feel that hurt properly. I could put my own patterns into words and still remain inside them. Knowing about myself was not the same as being close to myself. That distinction stayed with me deeply because it showed me how easily self-knowledge can become just another activity of the mind.
When I think today about what it might mean to truly look for myself, I do not picture a hidden truth waiting somewhere inside me. I think instead of the places where I usually leave myself behind. When I immediately correct a feeling because it does not seem reasonable enough. When I make a desire smaller before anyone else has even had the chance to reject it. When I adapt and later claim it did not really matter to me anyway. When I make a decision that fits perfectly with my self-image, while something inside me is left behind and does not come with me. Perhaps what I am looking for does not reveal itself in great revelations. Perhaps it appears precisely in those small moments when I notice that some part of me has not been given a place.
At this point, I – Your Best Liar also meets me in a very immediate way. While writing the book, I kept returning to the thought that self-deception does not feel like some foreign force. It speaks in our own voice. It uses our good reasons, our experiences and the images we hold of ourselves. That is precisely why we can spend years believing that we are on the way to ourselves while, in truth, we are mainly searching for a version of ourselves that is easier to live with. The inner liar does not necessarily say, ‘Be someone else.’ She can sound much kinder than that: ‘That’s just who you are.’ ‘That doesn’t suit you.’ ‘You don’t need that.’ ‘This is more sensible.’ And while I believe those sentences, the question of what is actually alive within me remains astonishingly quiet.
I have learned that this quieter level is not always comfortable. If I do not rush to explain myself, contradictory things can stand side by side. I can love someone and still need distance. I can be grateful and still dissatisfied. I can have chosen a path for a long time and no longer want to continue along it today. I can appear strong and still be tired. In the past, I wanted to resolve such contradictions more quickly because they did not fit a clear image of who I was. Now I experience them as deeply human. Perhaps being close to myself does not mean finally finding one clear answer to the question of who I am. Perhaps it begins where I stop acknowledging only those parts of myself that fit neatly together.
The sentence ‘You never really looked for me’ therefore sounds less like an accusation to me today. It feels more like an invitation to change the direction of my attention. Not to dig even deeper within myself, not to find another method, and not to finally uncover the one truth about who I am. More to remain where I would usually move on too quickly. With a no that I immediately qualify. With a joy that serves no sensible purpose. With a tiredness I do not have to justify. With a longing for which I do not yet have an explanation. Perhaps there is nothing grand hidden there. Perhaps no perfectly true self is waiting to be discovered one day. But sometimes I have the feeling that, in precisely those moments, I am closer to myself than I was during all those years when I was so busy trying to work out who I was supposed to be.