‘Finding Yourself’ Is Overrated

You don’t have a singular self to discover—but what you have instead is much more powerful

Illustration: Shira Inbar

Buried in the preface of Becoming — a book that, amid the rising chaos and upheaval of our current moment, remains one of the country’s bestselling memoirs — Michelle Obama makes a seemingly anodyne claim that, upon closer inspection, reveals a more controversial worldview. “Your story is what you have,” the former First Lady writes, “what you will always have.”

She’s right. She’s also quietly contradicting the premise upon which decades of self-help and centuries of literature have been built: that what you have, what you will always have, is not your story but yourself —and that it’s up to you to discover it.

Much of the world’s most popular memoir and fiction — from J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye to Cheryl Strayed’s Wild to Miguel de Cervantes’ Don Quixote — centers on the idea that we might go out into the unknown and come back having found our singular, definitive self. Motivational speakers build brands on that idea. Search “how to find yourself” and you’ll be awash in tips from outlets as diverse as the business-focused magazine Success, the women’s lifestyle site Refinery29, and the therapist blog network on Psychology Today; queries on Reddit and Quora; and a sea of…