We are meant to find and express our true self at work. The quest for self-awareness and authenticity takes us elsewhere. Five centuries since Shakespeare gave Polonius the line “To thine own self be true.” But these days, in many quarters, it’s not religion or literature that we turn to for help. Three millennia have passed since “Know Thyself” was carved above the entrance of Apollo’s temple at Delphi. Then it all dissipated and I went about the rest of a gloriously uneventful day. There was no need to find my self any longer. I felt relief and resignation, a liberating sense of closure.
The feeling that this restless, quiet, groggy, loving, worried, sporty bag of being was me. Attached to my family, to my work, and to a cable pulled slowly upwards by a tired engine. I had gotten up early after a late night writing to meet a looming deadline, and neither hot coffee nor cold sunshine had yet managed to wake me up entirely. One morning last winter I was holding on to a ski lift absentmindedly, half enjoying watching Jen and our children being dragged up the mountain ahead of me, and half worrying about a sentence that I kept reshuffling in my mind. Especially when it concerns who we really are. Clarity often visits unexpectedly, and it seldom stays for long.
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