They Tell Me I Should Be 'True To Myself' Poem by Shalom Freedman

THEY TELL ME “I SHOULD BE 'TRUE TO MYSELF”

They tell me “I should be true to myself”
“Authenticity is what it’s all about.”

But what is my ‘True Self’?
A friend of mine and David Hume
Tell me I don’t have a self.
I know I have a life and a history
And I do feel myself to be myself-

But my ‘True Self’?
When I am in the ground
Where will it be?
Heaven?
With God?
I don’t know-

I certainly think about myself
More than I think about anything else
And I do worry about all kinds of things
Connected with myself.

But my ‘True Self’?
With all the contradictions and the changes and the momentary feelings
With all the desires and the lusts and the fears and the search for creature- comforts
With all the relationships, the loves the angers the disappointments-

My ‘True Self’?
All these many things and all this mixed up stuff
Is me
But what I am
Even my name
The one I think of myself as
The one my parents gave me
The one I used for my American years?
The one I made first in Israel?
Is all mixed up and difficult to know-

My ‘True Self’?
Is this poem I am writing now
Whose lines will be forgotten in some minutes
Essential to my ‘True Self’?

I don’t know then my ‘True Self’
Even if I sometimes feel I do-

God- You’d better have an answer over here
Because I don’t think I can do this one
For myself.