So many of the stories we tell ourselves—about who we are and who we think others think we are—are not based on what is true. The question at the essence of Byron Katie’s work is: Is it true? The follow-up question is: How do you know? I found the idea annoying when I was first introduced to it, but after settling into it (not even with real openness), I realized it was annoying because it worked. It shone a light on ideas I held about other people and what “they had done to me,” which I had allowed to define me. The work is about personal responsibility.
Alberto Giacometti created figurative sculptures in which parts of the body are deeply elongated: head, torso, legs; sometimes more than one part, but never all parts. I was thinking about this in relation to self-awareness: we can focus on one part, or more than one, but not all of ourselves at exactly the same time. The truth of what we tell ourselves about ourselves is often a distortion that requires recalibration. Once performed, it effectively realigns elements into real truthfulness—an act Katie proposes and Giacometti reminds us to focus on.
