The War of Being Yourself: Accessing Authenticity
‘‘That which is to give light must endure burning’’- Viktor Frankl
From dealing with disappointed family members over your poor life choices, to pursuing something that secretly stirs you, but you keep putting it off again and again.
Why?
Because it goes against the very person you’ve been portraying all of these years.
Simply put, being ourselves is a war.
Who Are We Really?
To thine own self be true
- Hamlet, William Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’.
The idea of self has echoed millennia from Socrates’ Know thyself’ to modern-day psychotherapists and philosophers.
However, the earliest known sign of authenticity, the realizing of self’s truest form, particularly in Western civilization, arguably starts with Shakespeare, that hidden within each of us is a true self we must aim to actualize in this lifetime, yet so few of us do.
According to The Gospel of Thomas:
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.
