How to Become Who You Are?
Solving Nietzsche's Paradox of Self-Creation
“What does your conscience say? You should become who you are.” Friedrich Nietzsche (Gay Science)
At the center of Nietzsche’s idea of self-creation lies a paradoxical formula: become who you are. But how can one become what one already is?
Let’s dive straight into it.
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When first encountering Nietzsche’s philosophy, it seems like his works are filled with contradictory thoughts. Because they are. He openly embraced the fact that he was a thinker full of contradictions.
But, when read as a whole, an argument can be made that the central mission of Nietzsche’s philosophy is the affirmation of life. For him, this affirmation is the only real antidote to nihilism. It’s in this idea that we will find a clue for solving the paradox of “becoming who you are.” Because to affirm life, you need to affirm yourself, and vice versa. And you cannot affirm yourself if you don’t become who you are.
There is no better way to investigate the idea of life affirmation than through another one of Nietzsche’s most famous ideas, the one he called his "deepest thought." I’m talking about eternal recurrence. You see how everything ends up being connected in the philosophy of this seemingly chaotic thinker.
A quick explanation of eternal recurrence:
Imagine if you had to live your life over and over and over again, innumerable times, without a single thing in it being different. Every moment of happiness, laughter, and joy, but also every moment of pain, suffering, humiliation, sorrow, and fear, repeated into eternity.
Would you think of it as the greatest blessing or the most horrific curse?
The former would be the ultimate life affirmation. But then the question is, what does it take to be able to affirm life in this way? That’s what Nietzsche proceeds to ask in Gay Science, after laying out the idea of eternal recurrence for the first time.
"How well disposed would you have to become to yourself and to life to crave nothing more fervently than this ultimate eternal confirmation and seal?"
How well disposed to yourself and your life… Think about this for a moment. The question is not, “How would your life need to look like for you to affirm it?”
What kind of attitude would you have to adopt toward everything that you've been through? What kind of attitude would you need to have in order to love your own life and this existence as a whole so much that you would want nothing more than their eternal repetition? Who would you need to be(come)?
And now we arrive back at the idea of becoming who you are.
Whether you like it or not, you are already a collection of all your experiences, actions, thoughts, and beliefs up to this point.
But unless you impose your will on it, it’s a rather messy, unorganized collection. It’s not something you can affirm and wish for its eternal repetition. When you view all of the components of yourself and your life separately, you have plenty of reasons to think of eternal recurrence as the greatest curse.
In order to become who you are and say “YES!” to life, you must unify all those unrelated and seemingly contradictory parts into a coherent whole, into a narrative where every single part of it is necessary. You must make your life into a great story and yourself into a well-developed character. Only then are you able to will an eternal repetition of everything that you’ve been through. And you must continue doing it over and over again. Because life keeps giving you material to incorporate into your masterpiece.
“All ‘it was’ is a fragment, a riddle, a grisly accident – until the creating will says to it: ‘But I will it thus! I shall will it thus!" (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
How do you become who you are?
You already are, but you had no play in it. Now you need to become.
You become who you are by engaging in the never-ending process of self-creation. Instead of life being something above you and outside of you, something that’s happening to you, life becoming a work of art, or a story, that you are constantly creating.
"To recreate all ‘it was’ into ‘thus I willed it!’ – only that would I call redemption!" (Thus Spoke Zarathustra)
Thank you for reading.
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