Naturally there is an elaborate game going on here, elaborate only because after all this time you need to weave in and out of all the times you've caught yourself playing to the image. Yes, naturally, there are agendas, secret hopes, feigning the opposite of what you would do, bouncing your priorities off those you imagine others would expect, all of that is unavoidable because once suspected then moving either forward or backward has the same result, namely none, and the suspecting is not in your control, it's the usual shabby ancestral reflexes, exactly what you set out to escape from and keep meeting at every turn. If you care about purity of motive then you are lost from the start. How could you ever purify your motives, any motives? And when you sit back and laugh at the desperate comedy of it all it's no help to know that you are laughing at yourself too, which makes it even funnier. So accept your absurdity, no need to make gestures, tearing up each day's work, just keep on without the idea of persistence. It isn't your choice and attitude, effort, earnestness are not your concern.