Who Makes You Feel Real?

Who Encourages You to Be Your Authentic Self?

Jul 21, 2026

Who Makes You Feel Real?

I don’t think I’m boring. I have an abundant curiosity, and I love to learn new things. I’ve worked at many different jobs, read widely, and enjoyed interacting with a broad range of humans.

Give me a stranger on a train or an untranslatable word in a language I’ll never speak, and I will find in it a reason to be more awake than I was a moment before.

And yet.

Now and then across the years, I’ve slipped into temporary relationships with people who regarded me as uninteresting. In their eyes I seemed to register as beige. They’ve seen me as forgettable, a background figure in their more vivid movie. They didn’t see much of value in me.

I’m tempted to believe it was entirely their fault. They couldn’t see me for who I really am. But I suspect something more unsettling was also going on.

It’s possible I lived down to their expectations. Their quiet conviction that I was dull may have subtly instructed me to become dull. In their company, I didn’t have full access to my own beauty. I lost touch, at least a little, with my own aliveness.

This rather appalling possibility suggests that our vividness isn’t a fixed possession we carry around like a wallet, always available and immune to circumstance. It’s more like a flame that needs oxygen, and the people around us are part of our air supply. Some of them fan the blaze. Others seem to smother it.

We like to imagine that the self is a solid, self-generating thing. If we were truly authentic, we would radiate the same wattage in every room, unaffected by who’s watching. It’s a noble fantasy. But it doesn’t match my experience of being a living creature among other living creatures.

The more accurate truth is that we are partly called into being by the attention of others. A child becomes more fully a child under the delighted gaze of a parent who finds her fascinating. A musician plays better for an audience that leans in. And we all become more completely, unmistakably ourselves in the presence of certain people who give us permission to unfurl.

Being seen accurately is a nutrient. When someone perceives us as we really are, in the wild specificity of our idiosyncratic soul, they transcend the flattened caricature or the version that’s convenient for them. And as we bask in their appreciation, we remember things about ourself we had half-forgotten. Our jokes get funnier and our questions get braver. We feel real.

The reverse is just as potent. If we spend enough time being treated as smaller or more boring than we are, we may begin, against our own will, to comply. Not because it’s true, but because it takes an enormous, exhausting effort to keep being vividly ourself in front of someone who has decided we’re not.

Art by Valeri tsenov

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Now I’ll turn away from my lament and focus on my stubborn faith that life is conspiring to help us thrive.

That dull, deflated feeling in the wrong company is useful information. It’s our soul’s way of saying, “This isn’t your habitat. The light here doesn’t reach your particular colors.”

So the discomfort is a gift, if we’re willing to read it as one. It’s a compass needle swinging toward the places where we actually belong.

Because there really are people in whose presence we become more, not less. There are animals who love us without a single agenda, who reflect back a version of us that’s worthy simply by existing. In some situations, we slip effortlessly into the fullness of our gifts and forget to worry about whether we’re impressive.

So I’ll offer you the two questions that may help you organize your own life, as they do mine:

1. Which people, animals, influences, and situations make you feel real?

2. Who and what encourages you to be your authentic self?

Notice how your body answers before your mind does: A name or a face surfaces, or maybe an activity you’ve been neglecting because it doesn’t earn money or look productive. That flicker of warmth or longing is the trailhead.

I bring this up to encourage you to do what can feel selfish but is in fact an act of profound self-respect: Remove yourself, whenever you reasonably can, from situations where you have trouble being and feeling your true self.

I don’t mean you should flee at the first sign of discomfort or demand that everyone perpetually validate you. Real relationships do involve friction, challenge, and the occasional bruising honesty that helps us grow. There’s a difference between someone who sees you clearly enough to lovingly disagree with you and someone who simply doesn’t see you at all.

What I’m naming is subtler and more corrosive: the chronic, low-grade experience of shrinking. Like the friendships where you perform a smaller edition of yourself. Or the rooms you leave feeling vaguely erased, wondering where your personality went.

You are allowed, in fact, I would say you’re obligated, to protect your aliveness from those places: out of reverence for the improbable miracle of your own consciousness.

And here’s the reciprocal magic, the part that turns this from mere self-care into activism: As you seek out the people who make you feel real, resolve to be that person for others. Become a fanner of flames. Look at the humans and creatures in your orbit with the generous, curious gaze that assumes there is far more to them than meets the casual eye.

See them so accurately and warmly, that they stand up straighter in your presence and remember who they are. This is one of the most quietly revolutionary things a person can do. It costs nothing and it changes everything.

A proposed experiment: Make an actual list on paper, in ink. Title it: The People, Animals, Influences, and Situations That Make Me Feel Real.

Don’t censor. Include the friend who laughs at your strangest thoughts and the dog who greets you like you’ve just returned from war. Include the particular chair by the window where your best ideas arrive and the collaborator who treats your half-formed notions as treasure.

Then, gently and without drama, begin steering your life toward that list. Give those beings and places more of your hours.

You’re not boring and never were. You have simply, at times, been standing in the wrong light. So please go find the light that reveals your true colors. And while you’re at it, become a source of that light for everyone lucky enough to cross your path.

Addendum: In Praise of the Longing

Some readers may read my essay above and protest. They will reach for a famous prayer expressed by a certain self-help guru whose work I have mixed feelings about. This teacher says: “If I had a prayer, it would be this: ‘God spare me from the desire for love, approval, or appreciation. Amen.’”

In a moment, I’ll answer that prayer with a different one. Before I do, I’ll let you know that I reject this teacher’s sterile counsel. Not politely. Not with a nod toward how there’s wisdom on both sides. I just flat-out repudiate it.

To long for love and want approval are not weaknesses leaking through a crack in our enlightenment. They’re the felt evidence of our interdependence. Our body knows instinctively that we are made of each other and that each self is a collaboration.

Ask any mammal. Ask the elder whose loneliness shortens their life more efficiently than cigarettes. Our craving for each other’s care isn’t a spiritual error to be transcended. It’s a biological fact wearing the mask of a feeling.

I would rather be tenderly entangled than serenely untouchable.

There is tremendous freedom in yearning for the care of others. That sounds like a paradox but isn’t.

The person who has renounced all need for appreciation has purchased their invulnerability at a steep price: They have made themselves unreachable. Nothing can wound them because nothing can enter. They have achieved a kind of safety that’s indistinguishable from not being home.

Whereas I very much want to be home. I want to be susceptible to the good opinion of people I admire, because their good opinion is information about whether my love is arriving and whether the thing I meant to say is the thing that got heard.

So yes, I strive for others’ approval and appreciation and love. I have done this my whole life and I intend to keep doing it. It has made me a better artist and a better human being. The wish to be worthy of my beloveds’ regard has pulled me, again and again, toward more more generosity and more courage than I would have summoned alone in a room with only my own standards for company.

The teaching of the famous self-help guru implies there are only two available positions:

1. “I am obsessed with being appreciated, and therefore I betray every one of my own interests to get it.”

2. “I care nothing for anyone’s appreciation. I serve only my own needs and my own inner commands.”

But the fact is that between those two poles there is an enormous, fertile territory. Most of the good life happens there.

I live there. I am, I suspect, the most self-sufficient person I know. I satisfy my own fierce standards first and last, and no amount of applause will convince me that a weak sentence I’ve written is a strong one.

AND I also relish my need for the love of people who respect me and treat me well. I revere that need. I feed it and keep it well-watered.

There’s no contradiction. The desire to be loved and the discipline of holding one’s own sovereignty are not rivals for the same throne. They are two hands doing different work on the same instrument.

I’ll grant the sane kernel inside the famous self-help guru’s prayer. There is certainly a version of the hunger for approval that can be tyrannical. Like the performer who no longer knows what they think, only what will please. Or the person who dissolves in every room to match its temperature. That phenomenon is real, and it’s a form of suffering that deserves compassion and repair.

But the cure for a distorted appetite isn’t the abolition of appetite. We don’t treat compulsive eating by praying for the end of hunger. We don’t cure jealous love by extinguishing love. The work is to metabolize the longing well. How can we want appreciation from people whose appreciation actually means something? How can we let it nourish us without letting it govern us?

Personally, I want to treasure my own compass while remaining warmly and riskily open to being moved by others.

So here’s my prayer: May I never be spared of the desire for love. May I keep needing the regard of the people I cherish, and may that need make me kinder, wiser, wilder, more useful, and more awake.

And may I never mistake defended numbness for freedom.

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FREE WILL ASTROLOGY

For the Week of July 23

LEO (July 23-Aug. 22): Oak trees produce far more acorns than could ever grow into trees. Squirrels bury thousands and forget many of them, preparing the way for the next generation of forest. The trees succeed through strategic overproduction. I invite you to adopt their method, Leo. In the coming weeks, overproduce. Make more than you can track. Release more than you can manage. You don’t need to be perfect, just abundant. PS: This expansive capacity is yours to explore with delight and confidence, I guarantee it.

VIRGO (Aug. 23-Sept. 22): In the 19th century, Virgo naturalist Alexander von Humboldt helped launch the modern science of ecology. While exploring South America, he came to a revolutionary conclusion that’s obvious to us now: Nature isn’t a collection of separate objects but an intricate web of relationships. Mountains shape the weather. The plants and pollinators rely on each other. Underground mycelial networks perform many services for the trees. I propose that you channel your inner Humboldt, Virgo. Shift your focus away from isolated problems and instead observe the larger systems. Solutions may be elusive when you’re bound to a narrow view but strikingly clear when you perceive the wider pattern. If you’d like to take bold action, rely on the spacious perspective.

LIBRA (Sept. 23-Oct. 22): The coming months will be a favorable time to triple your devotion to the art of rowdy fun. I urge you to attend more revels and celebrations than usual, and always be ready to energize social functions with infusions of festive wit and gleeful conviviality. You will also have extra power to inject buoyant amusements into your intimate liaisons. Therefore, dear Libra, I designate you to be the Party Maestro of the Zodiac. I hope you will carry out your role with maximum exuberance, ingenuity, and joy.

SCORPIO (Oct. 23-Nov. 21): What if I told you that your most personal and potent dream can come true—but only through months of persistence, disciplined sacrifice, and stretches of bewildering but fascinating uncertainty? Would you reorder your priorities to chase it with every ounce of creativity you have? Or would you set it aside in favor of a safer and easier possibility? Between now and the end of October, I predict the moment will arrive to choose one path or the other.

SAGITTARIUS (Nov. 22-Dec. 21): On some occasions, you just don’t have the power to act with impeccable integrity and do the totally right thing. Doing the partially right thing may, however, be a useful and compassionate option. I bet this will soon be helpful advice for you. Blunt truth: There are moments when the “perfect” ethical, emotional, or practical choice simply isn’t available: The timing is off, resources are thin, or someone else’s limits block the ideal outcome. In those situations, waiting around for the flawless solution is a kind of paralysis that keeps you stuck in guilt or indecision. Instead, you can aim for the best available good.

CAPRICORN (Dec. 22-Jan. 19): In botany and gardening, there is a practice called “companion planting.” Certain plants thrive when grown near each other because they share nutrients, repel or distract pests, or improve soil and microclimate. Here’s an example: Indigenous peoples of the Americas planted the “Three Sisters” together: Corn gave beans a living trellis, beans added nitrogen to the soil, and squash shaded the ground to hold moisture and deter weeds. This principle may be useful for you to contemplate now, Capricorn. The people, tools, and influences you place near one another will influence your productivity and well-being. By blending complementary energies, your efforts will flourish without strain.

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AQUARIUS (Jan. 20-Feb. 18): Author Alain de Botton observed that “the person we marry is always far more remarkable, frightening, and complex than we quite realized when we first declared our love.” Rather than feeling alarmed by this revelation, I invite you to find it thrilling as you apply it to your best allies. The fact that they contain mysteries you haven’t yet plumbed means the relationships aren’t likely to grow stale. There are undiscovered depths in those you may think you know completely. My advice: Approach even your most familiar intimacies as ongoing discoveries.

PISCES (Feb. 19-March 20): Do you ever fear or distrust your own desires? Are you suspicious of achieving “too much” success? Do you ever feel starved for hope, but belittle yourself for wanting it? Do you go emotionally blank in the face of possibilities that should thrill you? If so, the coming weeks could bring healing and a breakthrough. You will have a chance to perform a rare kind of exorcism—not of garish demons or foolish ghosts, but of the quiet defeatism and lack of faith that dull your brilliance. Seize this moment, dear Pisces! Purge the automatic doubts that the world has trained you to mistake for wisdom.

ARIES (March 21-April 19): Authentic love songs are rare. Much of contemporary music leans toward infatuation, sex, heartbreak, and fury, while few artists seem interested in singing unabashedly about unique expressions of tenderness and enduring devotion. In the months ahead, Aries, your inner life will be gloriously out of step with that trend. Your heart is poised to wake up in sometimes surprising ways. Even if you’re not a trained vocalist, you may feel regular urges to express your passion and adoration in song. If I could give you a gift, it might be a curated playlist packed with the most radiant love songs of the last 60 years, so you’d have a soundtrack worthy of the lush emotions that I suspect will bloom in you.

TAURUS (April 20-May 20): Nobel Prize-winning Taurus physicist Richard Feynman kept a notebook titled “Things I Don’t Know About.” When he came across a question he couldn’t answer, he added it to the collection. I recommend a similar discipline for you now, Taurus, but with a twist. Keep a log of “Beautiful Mysteries I Don’t Really Need to Solve.” Rejoice that not every paradox and puzzle needs resolution. Savor the fun fact that some riddles enrich your life precisely because they remain open-ended. Hooray for not knowing! My theory is that some of your finest qualities will flourish in the presence of productive uncertainty.

GEMINI (May 21-June 20): In the early days of radio broadcasting, engineers sometimes spoke of “tuning the receiver.” Even when a station was transmitting clearly, a listener might hear static until their radio dial was adjusted to exactly the right frequency. The message was present and clear; the challenge was homing in on it. There’s a similar phenomenon going on in your life, Gemini. Useful information, fun inspiration, and interesting possibilities may be circulating in your vicinity. But you will need to adjust your attention so you can actually receive it. To bring the signals into focus, listen differently. Or pose alternate questions. Or pay attention to sources you don’t usually notice.

CANCER (June 21-July 22): Neuroscientists have found that remembering the past and imagining the future rely on many of the same brain networks. That overlap helps explain why vivid visualization may influence our emotions and behavior. When we repeatedly simulate alarming scenarios about what could conceivably happen, our brains treat them much like memories. This makes us prone to spotting “threats” in places that may be relatively safe. The good news is that the coming months will be an excellent time to retrain this habit, Cancerian. More than ever, your imagination can be a precision instrument you use to recalibrate yourself away from fear and toward possibility. Fantasize about wonderful possibilities with the same intensity that in the past you have dwelled on scary speculations.

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