Inter-being

We can’t be authentic to ourselves if others are not authentic to themselves. In the reading Emptiness: The Art of Interbeing on page 14 it says, “Even her skills and talents are the same as her parents’”. Everything a person does has a little bit of their parents and grandparents in it. Each choice someone makes has a little bit of ancestry in it. If sometimes someone does not understand why they are acting a certain way it could be because it is something an ancestor would do such as a parent or a grandparent. Just as we see the parent in the child you can also see the child in the parent. The reading also says on page 14, “We can’t say we don’t want to have anything to do with our parents. They are in us, and we are in them.” We do not exist independently everything and everyone relies on each other. So when we are being authentic we are not just being authentic to ourselves but also to our ancestors. We are trying to find ourselves by being authentic and staying true to ourselves. To be authentic to ourselves we have to be true to our orginiality and that we are different from everyone. We have to stay true to our ancestry and to the originality our ancestry provides. I agree with this version of authenticity given in the reading because it says staying true to one’s unique values, beliefs, and identity, rather than conforming to external expectations or pressures. You also have to be true to oneself and pursue self-realization or self-fulfillment.