Living an Authentic Life

No man, for any considerable period of time, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitudes without finally getting bewildered about which may be the truth.
     Nathaniel Hawthorne

Being authentic is the ability to be true to oneself. Living an authentic life requires the ability to be true to our own wants, needs and desires and not live our lives by the opinion of others. Being authentic is the ability to make self-honoring choices and stand firmly in who we are in our core. Being true to ourselves gives us the insight and compassion to see others for who they are, not who we expect them to be. It frees us up from the judgment of ourselves and others and it gives others the freedom to be themselves as well.
     Victoria J. Reynolds 

In the Bourne movie series, which we both love, Jason Bourne is a CIA agent on the run. He is a man who is trying to figure out who he really is. After hiding behind so many different names and aliases, passports and identities throughout his dangerous career, he is on a mission to rediscover his true nature and identity once and for all. For he never knows whom he can trust, to whom he can open up, with whom he is safe. His is a lonely existence, one constantly evading others. His only routine is running scared.

He struggles with this arc of his life. In an exchange with a woman who befriends him, as he laments the position he is in and many of the actions his life’s work has caused him to take, she responds with reassurance:

You were shot. People do all kinds of weird and amazing stuff when they’re scared.

When they’re scared.

That’s the point. When we are scared we so often hide and run from and evade and cover up who we really are. Like Jason Bourne we begin to lose our identities and don’t know just who we are anymore.

This past Saturday, I (Michael) spent the morning with about 70 members of a cancer support group – caregivers, survivors, people currently going through treatment. The theme I was invited to speak about was “hope”; they wanted and needed to be reminded about how important hope is on the cancer journey. But what was most touching and significant for me on Saturday was the time after the official program ended. That was when a line of people formed to purchase a book of daily spiritual affirmations that I had written for those living with cancer and (most importantly) a time when those on line begin to tell me their stories:

I have prostate cancer. It’s been hard. But I am doing well.
My sister has pancreatic cancer. She is scared.
Four weeks ago I was diagnosed with breast cancer.
I’ve been in remission for eight years.

We’d look each other in the eyes. Some wanted a hug. Some just needed to tell me what kind of cancer they were living with; that was enough. Others needed to tell me more details and go deeper; they lingered well after the others left. And all of them wanted to know that someone else cared, that they were not alone, that their stories could be heard.

They had once been scared. Many of them still were. Whenever you receive that life-threatening diagnosis, fear comes fast and with intensity. But they chose to face their fears and come together to talk about them. They chose to open up with one another about what it is like, what it feels like, what they are facing. Their openness is profound. It can have a remarkable healing power. Rather than run from their fears, they are embracing them, and in that embrace they are finding hope.

Years ago, I spoke with a man who also had cancer. But when he was telling me about his condition, he refused to say the word “cancer”. He was only willing to call it “C”, as in saying, I have “C”. He couldn’t bring himself to say the word. As was as if by voicing it, by directly calling it was it was, it made cancer real, true. It was as if by not saying the word “cancer”, he could deny its existence and its affects. I knew of another family whose son had AIDS. The stigma attached to that disease and how he probably had contracted the disease was too much for them to bear. So, interestingly, they called it “cancer” instead, denying the reality of what he actually had and who he actually was, a gay man. That denial left a son who ultimately died, sadly inauthentically, not being able to share who he was and finding the true support he needed in his final days.

How true that is for so many of us. Whether the challenge we have is life-threatening like cancer or AIDS, whether it’s an addiction, whether it’s a problem with anger, whether it’s being stuck in a career that brings no joy, whether it’s living in a marriage that is emotionally adrift, whether it’s a profound loneliness that we cannot overcome … whatever it is … as long as we hold it in and do not feel free to share it, to give voice to it, to open up about it with those whom we can trust, we will carry burdens that will crush us with the weight of their load. If we are constantly afraid of what others might think, of how they will react and possibly judge us, we will never be true to them – and most importantly, true to ourselves. We will never be our best and genuine selves – truly comfortable, truly contented, truly satisfied, truly at peace, truly free – if we do not and cannot be authentic about our strengths and our vulnerabilities, about our joys and our sorrows.

That weight is too heavy for any of us to bear alone. Constantly trying to bear it, especially alone, will bury us, cripple us and break us in painful and destructive ways.

We all need to unburden ourselves and to be authentic with ourselves in order to truly be our best selves. Yes. The world often tries to corral us into ways of thinking and acting and being that are not true to who we really are. Yes. It can be very difficult to acknowledge just who we really are, weaknesses and all. Yes. We are incredibly practiced at putting on masks, building up walls and creating pretty facades that hide our true motivations and selves. But the energy it takes to create those impressions is so often greater than the good we can do for ourselves and for others than if we would instead be more open, honest and free.
 

To be yourself in a world that’s constantly trying to make you be something else is the greatest accomplishment.
     Ralph Waldo Emerson