Book Review: On Being a Real Person

There have been moments throughout my life where I felt like I wasn't a real person. Although my presence took up space, there was a lingering emptiness that made me feel like something was fundamentally missing in my existence. It was as if I was this machine, disconnected from my life as a result of always protecting myself and disassociating from it. Rather than looking for it, On Being a Real Person found me at a time when I was desperately looking for some peace of mind. Why didn't I feel like a "real" person? What does unconditional "realness" look like? More importantly, how could I shift my way of being to embody such "realness"?

Harry Emerson Fosdick is an interesting person, with a very nuanced and direct way of expressing his beliefs about personhood. There were moments in this book that surprised me; Fosdick could have easily blended into the 21st century with his discussions on psychological disability, human imperfection, and the ego. One might even say he was "ahead of his time", or perhaps he was within his time, being the voice for uncomfortable thoughts that people chose to hide instead of say out loud. On Being a Real Person isn't a flowery or soft self-help book; it's gritty, practical, and holds you accountable with its tone.

At the heart of this book is the idea that one must let go of themselves to be a real person. Self-absorption is the bane of one's existence; thinking too deeply about one's experience is what causes distress. Rather than focusing solely on your experience, pouring and directing that energy outward onto others brings you closer to yourself. As someone with anxiety, it was tough love to hear that even my anxiousness was a consequence of being self-absorbed. However, Fosdick is right. Someone who lives too much inside of their heads is self-obsessed. How can someone ever truly develop themselves if they're too much into themselves? The pursuit of service and action leads you towards your purpose. You can't think your way to becoming your real self, you do it.

What I also really appreciated about this book was Fosdick's radical acceptance of pain as an inevitable aspect of life. He beautifully says, "the same fire that burns the wood hardens the steel." (pg. 18) What happens in our lives isn't the issue, it's how we rise above it that defines our propensity for resilience and peace. To be a real person means to relish the bad, not denying yourself of it. It's this resistance to negativity that leaves us in more pain than we need to be in. I've always found profound meaning in the saying that although you cannot choose the pain you deal with in your life, you can choose whether you suffer as a result of it. Pain is inevitable, suffering is a choice.

Mental illness is something that Fosdick surprisingly brings up a lot in this book. He even calls the "too self-centered man" a "psychological hypochondriac, examining his own pulse, inquiring how he feels, or dreading how he is going to feel." (pg. 82) It's fascinating to see the kind of language used to describe mental illness during the 1940s, and how it contrasts (and sometimes compliments) the way we speak about it today. Self-absorption and mental illness isn't something that I would have pieced together, but objectively it does resonate. Psychological distress is an inward process, like a river that flows into itself. "No man can be himself until he gets out of himself into work with which he identifies himself." (pg. 92) What if we directed some of this energy away from us, allowing the river to flow in a different direction instead of back into us? To truly enjoy our lives, we have to get lost in it, submerging ourselves in the river so that it could take us where it needs to take us.

If anything, I hope that this mild dissection of Fosdick's words inspires you to look into the past to solve the problems of the present. There is so much wisdom to be found in old books, as well as comfort in the fact that human beings have been pondering the same questions for almost a century. They're not so different from us; if anything, we are a reincarnation of them for better or for worse.

Quotes:

• "Happiness is never caused by circumstance alone and is often created despite it."
• "Personality is not so much like a structure as like a river - it continuously flows, and to be a person is to be engaged in a perpetual process of becoming."
• "When what we are and what we dearly want to be thus face each other in seemingly hopeless disproportion, inward civil war begins."
• "Watch what people are cynical about, and one can often discover what they lack, and subconsciously beneath their touchy condescension, deeply wish they had."
• "The richest values of his life lie not so much in what belongs to him as in persons and interests to which he belongs [to]."
• "We all have low moods, but we do not need to identify ourselves with them."
• "All anxiety is fear of oneself!"
• "A restless, hectic, feverish individual, forever on the go, is emotionally sick."
• "It seems to me that to put oneself in the second place is the whole significance of life."

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