Kierkegaard isn't simply saying you should "be yourself"—that tired advice misses his point entirely. He's arguing that despair itself *is* the condition of living inauthentically, not merely a feeling that follows from it; the two are inseparable. A person who spends thirty years climbing the corporate ladder to please a parent, then finally achieves the title only to feel hollow, hasn't just made a bad choice—they've been in despair the entire time, even during the promotions. The tragedy is that we often don't recognize our own quiet anguish because we've normalized it as simply "how life is."