Children like to pretend.  It is a natural part of childhood.  It is natural because it is necessary.It starts when very young.  My toddler only has a few words.  But she has a large vocabulary of noises that she makes to imitate us.  She does not know what the mean.  She knows that she does not know.  Just this morning I talked to her a little and she chattered something back that sounded to her like what I had said.  She was pleased with herself for being big like Dad.  But she was also curious to see how I would respond, because she knew she wasn’t quite getting it, that I was not making noises just for the pleasure of it.

So, in a sense, our authentic inner selves are born BSers.  Feigning to fit in comes naturally and spontaneously to us, because its what little children are fitted by Nature to do.  There is probably no way to be true to ourselves and also to be completely honest this side of eternity.  In eternity we will have finally grown up, there will be nothing more to feign, and the instinct to feign will no longer act because the occasion for it will be gone.

But this fundamental aspect of childhood shows the falsity of the modern idea of being true to your inner self.  Your inner self, your inner childhood, the inmost core of who you are, aspires to be something better.  You cannot find out who you are.  You can only find out who you are to become.