Ruminating on authenticity
What is genuine?
How is genuine?
A choice. A decision. A way of moving. Thinking. Being. Flowing/ going.
–adjective
1.possessing the claimed or attributed character, quality, ororigin; not counterfeit; authentic; real: genuine sympathy; agenuine antique. 2.properly so called: a genuine case of smallpox.
3.free from pretense, affectation, or hypocrisy; sincere: a genuine person.
4.descended from the original stock; pure in breed: a genuine Celtic people.
Is being genuine the same thing as being
radically honest?
I'm inclined to say no, to think of genuine-ness (authenticity) as an all-around way of engaging with the world while radical honesty, at least as Dr. Blanton describes it, is a way of connecting thought to verbal expression.
How does one be genuine? What are its implications for day-to-day choices, long-term goals, relationships/ ways of relating?
Trying to connect the ideal and the reality.
Thought: I want to be more genuine.
Action: ?
When I Google "I want to be more genuine," the first search result is "How to Smile" on wikiHow.
The authentic self is not the best self. It's the real one. Warts and all. Striving towards authenticity is NOT the same as seeking perfection (or even improvement). So why do I/ most assume the authentic self to be superior than the current?
A remembered conversation...
Me: I didn't feel like myself today.
Eric: Then who did you feel like?
Me: Wow. (That's profound.)
Living authentically means being honest with yourself (and honesty with the rest of the world will follow -- it's not the focus).
Farewell
This blog has been faithful to me for the past 16 months or so, but again wanderlust runs through my blood. Novelty calls, and I have answered:
a new blog, a new beginning.
le 18 decembre
On my way home today, I stopped by St. Joseph's Cemetery, something I haven't done in months, searching for the same thing I always go there to find and that I never do, that is peace and some abstract form of happiness derived from the physical manifestation, celebration, and commemoration of death and dying. Or else from some bestial pleasure at the recognition of my life in contrast with others' deaths. I'm not sure which it is. Anyhow, it's ironic how we create these seemingly immortal monuments to our own mortality. What are we trying to achieve anyhow? And now they'll disturb the dead by relocating their graves. How grave.
Blah blah blah emo blah blah blah
Today's been an incredibly long day. Slept three hours last night because of four successive movies, that is eight hours of brain-frying-to-perfection, only it isn't perfection, because I don't believe I'm one bit better off now than I was before. I've decided that when I go off on my year-long-international-stint, I shall update a blog daily, more as a form of accounting for myself than for anyone else. That is, assuming I get to go at all. My dear father shot down the idea the other day, when he realized how perfectly serious I was about going. But I am going to go. Whether they want me to or not. *evil laughter*
I feel lost at sea, drowning in my own despicableness and inarticulateness, envy and dread, hate and contempt. At what point does every misstep in your life catch up to you and you find yourself flailing about in a desperate attempt to fly because everyone around you seems to be taking off but you find you've plucked every feather from both your wings because you were listless and silly, and now. Well. Now. You're quite bald. And have nowhere to go. But down. A downward spiral into less than nothingness because negativity propogates more rapidly than nothingness ever could.
Hmph
Faced with the bitter realities of life, the strong shall grow stronger. "What does not kill you makes you stronger," so they say. Possessed by the fears of life, the weak shall grow weaker.
Heavy
The mind-burden has been growing, and now in place of a brain, an oddly shaped tumor sits in the cavity of a head. Is that better than that frightening emptiness, the shocking hollowness of today's young mind? I'm afraid not.
It's not personal...it's business
What a shocking taste of the future. Incompetency dooms humanity to eternal servitude under the mindless gods of Waste and Stupidity. If only Utopia existed, Utopia, where all work for all and all live for all; and people do not eat but to feed their brothers; and people do not drink but to quench the thirst of their sisters. Ah, but humanity, dear humanity, Utopia will never exist for you because of your avarice and your pride and your idiocy.
