Alienation and Authenticity

Abstract

At a convocation at my university, the recipient of an honorary degree urged graduating students to “express yourselves” (Koerner 2013). He described meeting a famous Canadian artist in his youth. The artist, Lauren Harris, told him that “the most important thing in life is to express yourself.” The speaker went on to a successful career and after many years met the artist again. The question to the younger man was not about his successes in engineering and business, of which he had many, but about whether he was still playing the piano, because the most important thing in life is to “express yourself.”