5: Authenticity is overrated

The case for accepting our culture as it is and keeping your back shop for yourself

We live in an age that worships choice and “self-actualization.” For a caregiver, this is often a source of pain—the feeling that you should be doing something else with your “one wild and precious life.”

Montaigne felt that constant questioning of one’s station leads to a “vertigo of the soul.” By embracing the role you were “born into” or “cast into,” you eliminate the exhausting friction of regret. There is a profound contentment in saying that this is the part I play. It turns a “trap” into a “context.”

Even though Montaigne had some pretty radical ideas, he didn’t try to topple the rigid world order he lived in. Montaigne was a “conservative by temperament” but a “radical by thought.” He remained a practicing Catholic and a loyal subject of the crown not because he believed they were divinely perfect, but because he believed that upending the foundations of one’s life usually causes more suffering than it cures.

For a caregiver bound by cultural expectations—the “good daughter” in a traditional family, the “devoted spouse” in a religious community—Montaigne’s brand of non-rational acceptance offers a way to stop fighting the reality of your life.

Montaigne argued that most of our lives are shaped by the customs of our culture. He didn’t waste energy trying to prove his culture was the best or even acceptable; he simply accepted it as the air he breathed.

When we are caught in a web of cultural expectation, it’s easy to spend a lot of mental energy asking: Why is this my job? Why doesn’t my brother help? Why is our society like this? Montaigne might advise we stop looking for a reason that justifies your burden. Accept that you are acting within a specific cultural “costume.” You did not choose the disease, the family dynamics, or the cultural pressures, but they are the “raw materials” of your life. By stopping the internal debate about whether your situation is fair, you preserve the energy you need to actually live.

Montaigne’s trick was to obey externally while remaining free internally. He followed the rites of the Church and the laws of France, but he kept his mind entirely independent. Just like Montaigne, You don’t have to believe the narrative. You can fulfill the expectation as a form of social “rent” you pay to live in your community, while privately maintaining a skeptical, humorous, or even detached perspective on the whole performance.

Authenticity as trap

Today, we prize authenticity—the idea that our “inner” and “outer” selves should be a seamless, transparent whole. To modern ears, Montaigne’s advice sounds like “masking,” which we often associate with the exhausting suppression of identity (especially in neurodivergent or marginalized contexts).

Montaigne, however, would view the modern demand for “total authenticity” as a different kind of trap—a tyranny of the ego that actually makes us more vulnerable to burnout.

To Montaigne, the mask isn’t meant to deceive others; it is meant to protect the self. He believed that if you give your entire authentic self to your role as a caregiver, you leave nothing in reserve. When the role gets criticized, or when the patient is ungrateful, it feels like an attack on your very soul.

By performing the role of the dutiful, patient caregiver, you keep your back shop safe. The patient interacts with the mask, leaving your true, private self unbruised and untouched. Masking is a form of emotional labor that prevents your core identity from being “used up” by the demands of others.

Modern culture tells us we must find our identity and life’s meaning in everything we do. Changing linens or managing medication rarely feels self-actualizing. Montaigne would argue that trying to be authentic while performing repetitive labor is an unnecessary burden.

If you accept that “caregiver” is a role you are playing, you don’t have to worry about whether that role represents the real you. You are free to be bored, or angry, or intellectual in your mind, while your hands do the work of the mask.

Montaigne lived through a time when people were killing each other over “authentic” beliefs. He saw external compliance as a way to maintain peace. In a family setting, speaking your truth at every moment can also lead to constant, draining conflict. Montaigne was one of the most honest writers in history, yet he never suggested we should be honest to everyone at all times. We can share what matters—our dedication to our family, our devotion to them, our commitment to the role—without telling them everything in our thoughts.

The danger of modern masking isn’t the mask itself; it’s when we forget we are wearing one and start to believe the mask is our only face. Montaigne’s back shop ensures that while the world sees a “caregiver,” you see a philosopher, a dreamer, and a free agent who happens to be doing a difficult job.

Surviving bullshit jobs

The French Wars of Religion were a chaotic time when the legal and social systems were nonsensical, corrupt, and broken. Montaigne’s approach was not to fight the system, but to accept the laws of one’s country as one accepts the weather. Seeing someone who had been in a position of relative power and having concluded that he was unable to effect meaningful change makes this an intriguing finding.

Montaigne saw that laws change based on who is in power or which way the wind blows. If you tie your peace of mind to the morality of the law, your peace of mind will fluctuate with the election cycle or the whim of a judge. Montaigne accepted laws because they were useful for keeping the peace, not because they were holy, moral, or just. By viewing the law as a clumsy human tool, you can use it when it works and circumvent it (mentally or strategically) when it doesn’t, without feeling like you are betraying the universe.

For a caregiver, the “laws” aren’t just the legal code; they are the Byzantine rules of health insurance, the maddening bureaucracy of government support, and the cold logic of the medical system.

Burnout often stems from a sense of moral injury—the feeling that the system should be better, fairer, or more efficient. We exhaust ourselves by being angry at the insurance company for being an insurance company.

When you stop expecting the medical system to be “humane” and accept it as a complex, flawed machine, you stop bleeding emotional energy. You navigate the bureaucracy with the same detached focus you would use to solve a difficult puzzle, rather than a personal crusade.

Montaigne famously noted that many laws are “vacillating and diverse,” yet he obeyed them to maintain order. He didn’t require the law to be just for him to follow it; he only required it to be the law. When a government form requires an absurd amount of documentation, or a legal hurdle prevents a simple solution, we can view it as a natural obstacle that just is, like a mountain in your path. Realistically, changing the policies required by a health insurance company, hospital conglomerate, or state government is not much easier than moving a mountain. You don’t get angry at a mountain for being tall. By accepting the rules as a neutral, if annoying, fact of your environment, you preserve your back shop from the corrosive effects of bitterness.

Montaigne found that by outwardly complying with the requirements of society, he bought himself the privacy and peace to do as he pleased in his personal life. The faster you “pay the tax” of bureaucratic compliance, the sooner you can get back to the actual work of living and caring. Do not fight the clerk; do not argue the “logic” of the policy with the person on the phone. Provide the external compliance they require as quickly and nonchalantly as possible.

Despair often comes from the feeling that we are failing because we cannot “beat” the system. Montaigne’s resignation wasn’t a sign of weakness; it was strategic conservation of force. We must maintain a whole life despite a system that is, at best, deeply flawed.

Acceptance and preparation

For Montaigne, Fortune was a capricious goddess who delighted in upending human plans. He lived through the plague, the violent collapse of civil order, and the agonizing kidney stones. He didn’t make peace with Fortune by trying to control her, but by refusing to give her a handhold on his soul.

Montaigne’s skepticism was his greatest defense. He realized that our despair often comes from our interpretations of events, rather than the events themselves. We label a change in health or a loss of fortune as a “catastrophe,” but Montaigne argued we don’t actually know the full story. By admitting ignorance, you lower the emotional stakes.

It’s not as if Montaigne always lived in the present and ignored the future and the past entirely. Montaigne practiced a form of mental rehearsal. He didn’t hide from the possibility of disaster; he invited it into his study to “domesticate” it. He famously spent a great deal of time thinking about death so that, when it arrived, it would be a familiar guest rather than a terrifying stranger.

Montaigne would tell you to look directly at your worst fears. If you imagine the worst-case scenario while you are calm, you strip Fortune of the element of surprise. Peace comes from knowing that even if the worst happens, you can handle the next ten minutes. He faced the possible future without falling apart with anxious worrying or obsessing over trying to control his fate.

Anxiety is a spiral that moves away from reality into a thousand “what ifs.” Preparation is a stare that looks directly at the most likely “what is.” Worrying is a scattered, frantic energy that provides no solution, only exhaustion. Preparation accepts that something will go wrong eventually and allows you to imagine the next steps. Preparation exhausts the fear by making it boring and familiar. Anxiety feeds the fear by keeping it vague and monstrous.

Montaigne’s most famous image is that of a man on stilts. He noted that no matter how high Fortune lifts us—through wealth, health, or status—we are still walking on our own legs. If Fortune gives you a “small life” of deprivation, she has only taken away the stilts. She hasn’t taken away your “legs” – your character, your ability to think, your capacity for small pleasures.

Contentment is found in realizing that your value is independent of your circumstances. Fortune can take your freedom or your sleep, but she cannot take your peace unless you hand it to her. I’m not entirely convinced of this one, but it’s a popular enough idea that it must help some people.

The patchwork life

Montaigne viewed life as a series of disconnected fragments rather than a smooth, logical narrative. He didn’t expect life to make sense or be “fair.” Some chapters of life are just filler and no lives have a happy ending. While he tried to steer his life trajectory – he didn’t just give up – he accepted that the plot would go wrong and there would always be a new crisis.

Rather than trying to make peace with the uncertainty and suffering of his whole life or even the next few years, he tried to take things one day at a time. The goal was not to contemplate and accept life without his soulmate or his daughter. The goal was to accept today’s weather and make it through the day.

The medical system, the trajectory of a disease, and the whims of the legal system are often incomprehensible. But Montaigne reminds us that we don’t need to “solve” the universe to survive it. By admitting we don’t know what tomorrow holds, we can finally resign from the exhausting work of trying to outsmart Fate. Instead, we can settle into the quiet, sturdy competence of today.

Before Montaigne, writing—and living—was expected to be authoritative and certain. He changed the rules by treating his life as a series of experiments, a collection of “trials” rather than final answers. He gave us permission to be walking contradictions: patient one moment, resentful the next; a caregiver in the parlor, yet a free soul in the “back shop.” He proved that we are allowed to feel the “ugly” emotions of boredom or bitterness without losing our integrity. We are simply, as he was, a patchwork of light and shadow.

The world may see us as a servant, a saint, or a functionary, but Montaigne’s greatest gift is the reminder that we belong only to ourselves. He discussed his failing memory and his love for his cat with the same weight he gave to classic philosophy, revealing a universal truth: the “small” life is the only life we actually have. To care for another, to breathe in a quiet room, to taste a piece of fruit, or to simply endure a difficult hour with equanimity is not a waiting room—it is a masterpiece.

We are not waiting for life to start once the caregiving ends. This—right now—is the life.

I owe a debt to Montaigne for opening the door to my own meandering and inexpert thoughts. He championed the idea that wisdom begins with admitting our own ignorance, and that the world’s greatest cruelties often come from those who are too sure of themselves. In a world demanding perfection, he suggests a different goal: a life lived with humor, a bit of pleasure, and the radical courage to be exactly as flawed as we are.