By
Desiree Passion Namachotsa
The whole world is searching for true happiness, everyone doing their job to make an impact, but have we considered authentic existence?
Authenticity is the art of being genuine, in other words real. Things that are authentic are those that you can’t find anywhere else and they do not have a duplicate. No two persons are the same, even if they are identical twins.
Every single day of our live we pass through difficult situations that prompt us to hide in our shells or to shout on top of our voices. But at the end of each day the question would be; did we go through an authentic day?
In the search for an authentic life, a person needs to live a real life, of one’s true self. The truth is that we have been living for someone else, either voluntarily or not. Florence Scovel Shinn once said “if you do not run your subconscious mind yourself, someone else will do it for you”. This entails that we have given control of our mind to other people, we let people direct our decisions, our behavior as well as the things that we consider essential or not.
Our subconscious mind records everything that we hear, everything that we see and when that routine repeats itself for some time, we start believing it and becomes one’s next character. We do things that are contrary to our beliefs because of some reasons like:
- Pity or feeling sorry for someone especially friends. We may feel sorry that they do not have enough friends or they are usually discriminated, not that it is bad, but is there not any other way of being friends with someone authentically?
- Making someone happy. There are times whereby as a human being we give up some of the most important things that we treasure to people just because we want to make them happy. We leave other things behind because we want to make that friend happy, we drink beer because we want to make that friend happy.
- Stopping people from talking. There are many things that we have done because we wanted to stop people from talking about us. I for one, would stop being friends someone because I was scared that people will talk, or I wanted to stop some unwanted rumors that might have been running around, but it really never made me happy for I just wanted to cut the mouth of people.
There are many other reasons why we do things contrary to our beliefs. All this proves how unauthentic we live. We live for others but we need to live real.
Now authentic existence is when we remember that no matter what, apart from God, the only person that we are with everywhere, every time and in any situation is “US”. We understand that from our experience, that friends are there for a certain period of time. The people that we never thought would ever leave, do leave, either by desire or distance.
Ask yourself these questions; are we still friends with all of our primary school friends? Are we still friends with all of our secondary school friends? Are we still friends with everyone whom we ever met and made friends with? The answer would be NO! But all in all these are the persons that have affected our lives greatly, that friend who stopped you from being with your soul mate because she hated him where is she now? And how did that help you later on in life? Imagine having a crush on the most beautiful girl in your class, and just because your friends continuously tell you that she is out of your league, you stop yourself from expressing how you feel. Years later, you meet her in a shopping mall, with groceries in her hands. She stops you and you start a small talk, in that talk she confesses how in love she was with you, and how you disappointed her for not asking her out because she wouldn’t express herself, and she concludes by saying “anyway, I guess not everything is meant to be right”. You will definitely regret and beat yourself up The fact remains the same and that is you let the people around you control how you feel. So the question is “were you REAL?”
We have let our authenticity be controlled by the things and people that are surrounding us, hence we are never real. Being real means assessing yourself if what they are saying collides with your belief or not. Being real means that anything you do, has to represent who you are. It is not self-centeredness but consider yourself as a priority in decision making, knowing that you are your own priority.
When we try to please people, we look desperate for acceptance, we create a certain image that is different from who we are, and our appearance becomes different from our true self. We seem like someone else hence we are called unauthentic people. People who move by the wind’s direction.
Being authentic is a gift that we place in ourselves. Being real is a choice, it is a decision that we make as we grow, to be able to consider what is important? To what? and why?
If we can’t be real with who we are, then why live at all? If we can’t be authentic then why prove our existence...
I would rather not live..............than live unauthentic life.
What kind of life would u rather live??
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