I've been thinking about the concept of true nature. As in, which is my true nature--the reckless drinker or the serious abstainer?

The more I've thought about true nature, the more I've come to believe that it can be a dangerous concept for people trying to change their lives. That is, if a person believes that the problematic behavior she is trying to move away from is her true nature, then her attempts to change become an act of suppression.

Ongoing attempts to suppress what a person believes to be her true nature make her feel that she is betraying herself, selling out, bowing to the man, or relinquishing something she can never retrieve.

And suppression is frowned upon by progressive society, too: It is believed that a person shouldn't try to suppress her true self, whether it's her sexuality or her personality, and that such an attempt will always be doomed. The true nature will always surface.

Until recently, I've believed that my true nature is to drink. But as I get further away from it, some of the choices I made and things I did seem unbelievable. Perhaps it would be more useful to imagine that I'm moving toward rather than away from my true nature. But that rings really false, because my daily life still seems alien to me. I'm still amazed at how I live.

So maybe the idea of true nature is a false one, constructed by people as a way to make us feel like we can really know and understand another person, or to make us feel like we can predict our own behavior, or as an excuse for doing what we know we shouldn't. Really, the whole idea of a true nature suggests something unchangeable. And change is possible.

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