To sum up, Julie’s failures are either due to a lack of will, or to false desires. Digging a little deeper, both points rejoin on the concepts of “true self” and “free will”. “True self” is what we could call “the real Julie”. “Free will” is the ability of the “real Julie” to do whatever she wants by pure acts of her will.
Julie suddenly stopped her diet. To some, this reversal is a failure: she lacked will when she could have persevered. To others, Julie made the right choice. She put pleasure over weight issues. Both arguments tend to rejoin.
For the former, Julie could, at any time and freely, acquire the will she is lacking. Her failures obviously reveal, as Bernard deducted, her complete lack of will. The real Julie is characterized by her bad choices and her failures: “Julie is the way she is, she makes her own choices, choices that correspond to her, choices of Julie, poor dear!” With the confidence and acuteness of a senior executive, Bernard declares “she is too soft and faint-hearted”. From the beginning, he has classified her as an average / low performer. Ultimately, free will makes Julie responsible of her own failures.
The explanation of the others is nicer. To them, Julie’s desires are false desires. If she knew herself better, she wouldn’t torture herself with diets that are not for her. Julie made the right choice, even if she ignores it. Being slim is not for her, it is not her. She simply does not know her real nature, that of a fat girl who eats up potato chips.
To sum up, Julie is a gone case. It is useless to fight against oneself. Her choices reveal who she truly is. Her vague desires are like waves on the pond of her being. What remains from her relatives’ good advice is that it is ok to be oneself. To feel better, Julie should accept her real self.
Yet the suffering lingers. Julie is not out of the woods and neither are we. This desire to be another person, where does it come from? And why can’t we achieve it? Are we forever condemned to rebrand our failures as “bad choices” or “bad desires”?