Ruminating on a Sunday Morning

We often hear, in various forms, about people looking for their authentic selves. In all honesty I can't imagine what they seek.

The first problem is that such a trek implies they are somehow complete as they are and simply must find that completeness within themselves.  While I believe there is some truth there - I will employ an old religious trope and assert that the Ten Commandments are indeed written on our hearts - the answer can't be so easy. I find they are written on my own heart yet I routinely violate them. So it seems to me that having some ideal self within you fails to help you in your search precisely because the self, the honest self anyway, realizes that it isn't perfect right from the start despite having an innate idea of where inspiration can be found. Looking for you entirely within you then becomes little more than self indulgent. I don't see why that can be trusted. We cannot be our own judges as we will be too harsh, or more typically too lenient, with ourselves.

Then there is the very question of authenticity. Are we born a blank canvas or are we born complete? I don't see a blank canvas possible if we have some idea of right and wrong, good and bad from the start. Yet I don't see us complete either. We aren't born this way in the sense that we can't alter or adapt. Indeed we must change ourselves to really grow as persons. We don't leave infants and toddlers, teens and young adults, alone. We guide; we direct; we instruct; we train, even if only by inference. We begin to do all that to ourselves eventually after what are called the formative years. 

I suppose my point here is that there isn't really an authentic self within any of us. We must be, we will be, influenced by outside forces no matter what. It's so clear that we aren't born whole and authentic but rather develop over time that I can't see the point of questioning it. It's not a matter of being authentic but of what we do with our lives. Do we discipline and direct ourselves towards something or are we all right exactly as we are? 

If the latter, you can stop looking for the authentic as it's already there. If the former, it might be a good idea to start judging the well from the ill and acting accordingly.