"Just be yourself."
It sounds like good advice.
That is the problem.
Socrates hears it before a job interview, a first date, and the writing of an online profile. So he does what Socrates does.
He asks a question.
Which one?
From there, an ordinary walk becomes a journey through some of the most familiar instructions of contemporary life:
Find yourself.
Know yourself.
Choose for yourself.
Think for yourself.
Make yourself.
Improve yourself.
Own your choices.
Own your story.
Live your own life.
None of them are simply wrong.
But each becomes stranger when Socrates takes it seriously.
Along the way, he meets friends, strangers, workers, teachers, people changing careers and changing lives-and a dog that seems considerably less troubled by the problem of being itself.
Socrates, Just Be Yourself? is a playful philosophical walk through the modern script of the self: who we are, how we change, what we choose, what happens to us, and how much of a life can ever be called entirely our own.
It offers no final answer.
Socrates is learning that too.
Sometimes the question changes.
Sometimes the road changes.
And sometimes, perhaps, the wisest thing is simply to notice-and keep walking.