The ideal self calls permanently

The self is not located anywhere. However, we are all constantly exchanging ideas with this spectre we call the self, with which we identify in the most intimate way, from which – this self – the very concept of intimacy springs.

No action taken on our own behalf would make sense, nor would it even begin, if the self did not come first as the initiator of that action. For example, I take a trip alone to clear my mind and see other landscapes, experience another culture, hear another language. There I go to take care of the self that is within me. But when I really want to define or reach that self that I am, it is as elusive as a spectre. It remains in sight and yet unattainable, like a star.

There is an infinite distance between the self that believes in the self and works and strives for it, and the ideal self. And it is this ideal self that constantly commands us. It is towards this ideal that all actions aimed at improving ourselves, appeasing ourselves, achieving the ‘best version of ourselves’ are directed.

The ideal self is not just a self that my thoughts postulate as real, it is real, because my thoughts need this principle on which they can be felt as ‘mine.’ The self that is presupposed to any experience, and to any thought for that matter, is directed towards an ideal self that it seeks to achieve.

Perhaps the reason we never achieve the nirvana of the self, a nirvana that would be the end of the distinction between the self that desires and the self itself, lies in placing something between the ideal self and the self that seeks to achieve it. Perhaps the mistake lies in giving in to the idea of being a subject, a traveller through life seeking to achieve the ideal self. Perhaps, as Lacan states, the subject reveals itself only as a product of sentience and language, a way of uniting the elusive ideal of the self with the continuous sense of receiving, in our physical presence, experiences that we say and feel as our own. The subject is, in Lacan’s words, ‘what one signifier represents for another signifier.’

As much as some philosophies view the subject and even the ‘self’ itself as an illusion, they are not so at all. The presence of a self-aware cognitive body implies the appearance of subjectivity as a manifestation of the ideal self. As tempting as it may be to proclaim that we are all deluded in finding the happiness that suits us individually, the truth is that there is no humanity if we do not attend to the fact that what comes first is the individual. There is no anthropos without self-awareness and, as such, without an ideal and unique self. It is not possible to exclude the principle of narcissism in the pursuit of each person’s completeness. One cannot be and continue to be a sentient and self-aware being without the self trying to rediscover itself in its ideal, which is both its origin and its end.

The self that seeks the ideal self behaves like a devout believer towards its god, and so it should be, for then its steps will be greater. The self is the most untainted and upright absolute.