AUTHENTICITY

When we have achieved the ability to see ourselves as we are – which is to say, when we have integrated our attachment to being this or that and our fear that we may never achieve it – we no longer need to seek our identity in the mirrors of others peoples' eyes. We KNOW what we are. And when we KNOW what we are, we also know that what other people THINK we are cannot possibly change it. At this point the perceptions of others are reduced to what they really are – the perceptions of others. They are not our SELVES, and they cannot in any way define us. At this point we become authentic. Authenticity leads to peace of mind.

I suspect people in public life have an especially difficult time with authenticity. After all, the very phrase “public life” means, “life in the public eye,” which is another way of saying, “life in the public perception.” People who seek a life in public perception tend not to be very introspective, and it is introspection that leads to authenticity.

This is not an introspective age and we Americans, in particular, aren’t very introspective. We live in the world of matter. We believe in science, the quantifiable, the “objective” – by which we mean, the external. We want our achievements and abilities graded: batting averages, football rankings, opinion polls, report cards, achievement tests, IQs, SAT scores.

Interestingly, this obsession with the external “objective” is the flip side of an internal myopia. The need to see ourselves mirrored in other people’s judgments of our abilities and achievements masks our inability to see the abilities and achievements themselves. Having abandoned our inner life, we have exiled ourselves to worrying about what OTHER people are thinking, rather than what WE are thinking. We spend our lives trying to manage OTHER peoples’ perceptions and expectations, rather than taking time to discover and enjoy the unique, idiosyncratic being WE are EXPRESSING.   Make no mistake: inauthenticity is not a respecter of identities. Slavery to the opinions of others manifests equally in the aspiration to be a high school politician, a cheerleader, a bad-boy or a clown. If we are trying to manage other peoples' perceptions, we have not achieved authenticity.

One interesting thing about authenticity is that if we have it, we immediately recognize and appreciate it in others, and if we don’t have it, we don’t recognize or appreciate it at all. That’s because when we are authentic, we see other people as they are. When we are inauthentic, we are so busy trying to figure out what we SHOULD be thinking (because of what OTHER people might think of others and what other people might think of US if we think this or that about others) that we cannot possibly see anyone as they really are. What's possibly even worse, we can't trust what other people tell us, because we aren't sure that if we were in their place we would say something truthful ourselves.

It has become something of a national pass-time among Americans to disparage politicians. Yet the undeniable fact is, America is a democracy and every single politician in America was elected. So sorry as I am to say it, if we Americans want our politicians to be more authentic, we're just going to have to become more authentic ourselves.