"I can fake with the best of anyone, I can fake with the best of them all, I can fake with the best of anyone, I can fake it all." -- "Fake It " by Seether
Just this morning my dad told me I could come up with some music reference, some witty quote from a movie or video game, to suit any off-hand comment someone might make. Using this particular knack of recall, I supplied the above quote (and some help from good old Google supplying me with the exact lyrics) for something I found hideously disgusting. The now common adage, "Fake it, til you make it," worming its way into society like the parasitic infection it is, has found foothold in people's hearts, enough that it would be common and simple enough advice to give out to people, usually those looking for work or trying to go through those pesky presentations schools love far too much.
Truth be told, my ire and antipathy toward those six little words is probably the strangest thing about the phrase. Like so many other things we are told, it has that air of advice too important to simply let slide into the backs of our brains, but at the same time, has all the makings of a poison. I once wrote a speech about pessimism, and why being a "negative" person was not the stereotypical "bad thing" people today make it out to be. One of my arguments for such is that, we all experience negative feelings and emotions.
To try and think only happy thoughts and experience only "happy" emotions (studies do say, after all, that "happy" people have a greater life expectancy) is to not only give you undue anxiety over policing all your thoughts (likely increasing the negative emotions, ironically enough) it also means you experience half of life.
You ask why this is relevant about my arguments for caution with these bits of advice?
I am not saying they have anything to do with each other. But both of those "words of wisdom" masquerade as sound reasoning and "good advice." They're not good advice, especially when coupled with contradictory phrases (do the words "be yourself" come to anyone's mind?) but nonetheless, based on the way society sees these two things, (who doesn't want to be confident? Who doesn't want to be happy?), and they appear as such.
Faking who you are and what you can do until you become something else? To me, that's telling someone "fake everything you are until you become something you're not." That's terrifying. To someone who strives for authenticity in everything she does, for a girl who, even if she wanted to, couldn't lie to her parents over a seemingly inconsequential childhood experiment (nothing dirty, I promise you) this sort of mindset that you can just fake your way to "success" and to the betterment of oneself... Not only is it toxic, it's downright nauseating.
As much as the "be yourself" adage is cliche and trite, I still find it better than telling people to go through their lives with fake smiles, trying to hide their negativity, and "Just doing it" as Nike would say. (I hate that phrase as well, by the way. We have too many "doers" already and not nearly enough thinkers.) I am not saying it is necessarily or inherently wrong. I am saying that, to me, all this feels wrong. I am telling you to think carefully before following through advice like this. I am saying that what's wisdom to someone (as in, actually helpful) could be utter stupidity for another.
Oh, and that come from above? It's coupled afterward with the line "Whose to know if your soul will fade at all, the one you sold to fool the world, you lost your self-esteem along the way." In other words, the lines about "faking it" are very tongue-in-cheek, albeit, in a less joking manner.
