“Authenticity, ironically, has become a performance”

Clark Kent was a disguise for Superman. All he had to do was put on a tie and a pair of glasses, and even his closest buddies at the Daily Planet couldn’t recognize him.

Not so with authenticity. No pants or jacket, socks or necklace will fool your friends and colleagues.  

But that doesn’t mean some won’t try.

“…authenticity, ironically, has become a performance,” says Peter Sokolowski, Merriam-Webster’s editor at large, in a statement released today unveiling “authentic” as the 2023 Word of the Year from “America’s Most Trusted Dictionary.”

How have we reached a place where “authenticity” and “performance” can be used in the same sentence?

Because of a fundamental fallacy: “Authentic” is not a synonym for “real” or “true,” unless we’re talking about documents. People are too complex, and life is too complicated, for these reductions.

Authenticity is an ever-shifting understanding of the moments and memories and experiences that make up your whole life, your full self. 

We can’t be “real,” or perform as such, but we can be whole. 

We get there through a desire to examine our past—the joys and the sorrows, the elation and the shame. And we can do that work most effectively by allowing the pen to move freely across the page. 

Once we see, we cannot unsee. We integrate our new understandings into our present self, and we live from that place.

So the next time someone tells you to “just be real” or “be your true self,” tell them you’ve got something better. And it cannot be taken on and off like a superhero cape.