We Are Strangers to Ourselves

A youthful Friedrich Nietzsche.

Is identity a fiction, a story we tell ourselves about ourselves? As we peer deeply into the mirror, searching for satisfactory answers—a self who is convincingly persistent—we may not find anyone. We live with lies. We find one of the countless available narratives and thread together a story: an arrow through the disarray of a battlefield.

The views of Friedrich Nietzsche (pictured) views are in harmony with this idea. In his book On the Genealogy of Morals he writes:

'"What did we actually experience just now?" Still more: "Who are we actually?" … We remain of necessity strangers to ourselves, we do not understand ourselves, we must mistake ourselves.'

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