When “what is authentic to you” is totally fake
I feel there’s something odd with how the word “authentic” is used. Our mouths are full of it. We are searching for it, trying it out, figuring it out. It’s hot to be “authentic”. “Authenticity” sells. But do we really understand what it means to be “authentic” and are we truly brave to dive in and live our “authenticity”?
Recently, I have been reading a part of an essay I wrote to a friend of mine and he commented on one sentence saying something like “I would say it like this, but I don’t know if that feels authentic to you”. Feels authentic to me? What does that even mean? How do I even figure out what feels authentic to me, I panicked a little from the inside. Is it as easy as, for instance, selecting a tote bag and parading in front of a mirror and seeing if it somehow feels right for me? But that is only one type of “authentic”, namely your personal style. What about other types of authenticity? A word or expression or even a dialect that feels authentic to you, or how about a facial expression, a hand motion, the way you move or the way you “carry yourself”? We can go even further. How about the thoughts you create in your mind, your ideas, your creative expression? Which part of your thoughts is “authentically yours” and which part did you borow from the world around you? As we witness, defining authenticity gets awfully complicated, and yet, as humans, we somehow easily recognize it in others, in someone’s work. It is appealing and effortless, like Versace Fall-Winter 2020 dress collection and we want to be near it, experience it, revel in it. Even if it is someone else’s and not ours.
Thinking about it, I myself have been totally “un-authentic”. I realized the other day, that everytime I stand in front of a mirror I have a tendency to contort my facial muscles with a purpose to make my face look “more beautiful”, according to some standard implanted my head. But what my facial expression ends up looking like is unnatural. Moreover, contorting my face started to feel burdensome, and that is how I noticed I have been doing it in the first place! Also, I have recently been transitioning between two very different careers. You know how different industry has its own culture accompanied by the stereotypes. So, for instance, the tech people or data science engineers are in general perceived as “nerdy”, academics in theoretical sciences as generally “distanced” and introvert etc. Following the same line, I noticed how I started feeling this urge to make myself sound, and appear like people I have in my head as typical representatives of the target industry. And, again, I realized I was doing it by feeling that the behaviors I am trying to emulate feel somehow burdensome and I don’t want to do it.
The question is why. Why do I put myself under these little tortures? Why do I try so hard for my foot to slip in the beautiful glass shoe when that shoe, in the first place, no matter how glossy and elegant, was never meant to fit my foot?
How much time wasted! My facial practice that I was trying to push forward as authentic was, in essence, a total fakery. Instead of trying to figure out what works for me, what for instance, enhances my relaxed face, I tried to change the face instead. Wrong! OK, so following my realization, I tried walking around with a relaxed face instead. And what happened? Initially, I felt discomfort. I felt somehow exposed, vulnerable. But to be unable to walk around or take a photograph with a healthy, relaxed face, and accept my face with all its little quirks and features seems much worse to me. There you go, authenticity is only for the brave; those who do not give a damn about what they think other people will think about them and whether they will fit in what they think the stereotype is within a particular culture or not. So in my case, it all boils down to:
To fit in or not to fit in . That is the question.
These are wrong dilemmas, wrong questions. I don’t want to be defined by what I think someone else thinks I should be or look like. Obvious enough, but not so easy to pull out. Especially so, if you learned through your life that what you are is not good enough.
One of my favourite designers of all time, the “bad boy” of high fashion, Alexander McQueen, didn’t care about what other people thought about his collections and the style he was pushing. At least, not initially. When he did start to care what the critics were saying about his collections, he also started deteriorating psychologically.
Imagine what potential for an individual, what creativity and happiness lies ahead if we only allowed our truest selves to come through! If instead of looking around and recycling ideas and trying to fit in, we “relaxed” our whole being and allowed it to take shape in the way it is supposed to, by nature.
And, before I finish, a friendly advice (in case you need one). Don’t trust people whose mouths are full of “authenticity-talk” and of “is”-es and “not”-s of their own authenticity, because, the high likelihood is, that they are totally fake.
