I do not believe in immortality of the individual, and I consider ethics to be an exclusively human concern with no superhuman authority behind it.
– Albert Einstein,
Authenticity is about being true to ourselves. About understanding the boundaries of our lives and finding a way to be ourselves within these boundaries.
Boundaries are part of our universe, our world, our nature and therefore a fact of our existence. There is no concept of life without boundaries, the ultimate boundary being that of life and death itself. Our experience is a continuum of boundaries that we constantly bounce against or try to crash through, sometimes physical, experiential, or mental.
Paradoxically, we need our boundaries. We deliberately create them to help us establish structure in our lives. Relationships, families, work and finance are all boundaries that we spend years of our lives creating, maintaining and manipulating. Mental boundaries including our ethics, principles and points of view provide us with our defences and guides to behaviour. We need these frameworks to add structure and meaning to our experience of life.
To live authentically we need to understand that the removal of our boundaries always has a cost, a price, a consequence and in many cases this is a price we are not prepared to pay.
Once we acknowledge and accept this we can begin to seek the true authenticity of our lives. Authentic living is about following personal direction while taking account of the limitations of our situation. It doesn’t mean taking the path of least resistance, but going in the direction that our conscience dictates.
The StirringPond. 