Before I can even beginning to delve into authenticity in some sort of deeper way I first need to address my obsession with the word authenticity.
There’s something about the word authenticity that really resonates with me. I think it is because it represents this idea of honest self? Or perhaps that it represents true originality despite living in a world that lacks originality or where no one is themselves original? Or that allows me to be original while using unoriginal material. More and more this word makes it into my vocabulary when I speak about self and a movement and my experience of life. I truly deeply creative authenticity.
I feel like it is only been in the last year or so that I have begun to understand really what it means to live authentically. Only in the last year or so have I started to establish parts of myself and delineate ideas and values that truly feel authentically mine. Many of my experiences this past year forced me to deeply question and reconsider some of my most fundamental beliefs of My reality. This process resulted in the dismantling of my ideas and then a reconstruction of something entirely new from the old.
And I think that this process of dismantling, examination, and reconstruction is the path towards an authentic self. We are all composed of beliefs that we’ve shouldered unconsciousness, as a process of being apart of a certain culture, family, friend group, etc. As we grew up, we identified with different groups and subsequently assumed their values and lifestyles. As we explored our own creativity, we copied those we admired. We unconsciously assumed the components that made up who we are.
This leads to a sense of feeling fake, empty, discontent, etc. It is because we don’t truly feel a strong attachment to any of our ideas or beliefs. Because they were given to us (versus created by us), they can also be taken away. They never fully take root.
Creating an authentic self requires discovering which beliefs we have assumed unconsciously, dismantling them in order to examine them honestly and apart from them, and the reconstructing new systems of knowing and thinking for ourselves.