Does being authentic mean publicly sharing
everything about yourself, at the risk of
rejection or even violence?
Consider this:
How do you react to people who hold political, religious, social
views or practices different from your own?
Do you feel threatened and want to destroy them? Do you feel
compelled to convert them to your own views? Do you feel the need
to prevent your children from being exposed to them? Do you avoid
them?
Are you curious to understand them?
Does it depend on whether these people are in your family, your
neighborhood, your workplace, your profession, your country, or
in positions of power?
I’ll admit, I’m not always as open-minded and curious as I’d like
to be when people who don’t value what I do appear to threaten
things I care about. This, despite the fact that I like to
believe that no one has the power to create my reality.
Sometimes I have to work at remembering that.
Because I DO live in the world with other people, and I AM
affected by what I see around me, it takes some effort to remind
myself that I’m always in charge of what happens in my reality.
But even though I think I shouldn’t care what others think, and
my well being shouldn’t depend on the approval or disapproval of
others, I often catch myself wanting approval anyway.
I catch myself treading carefully with what I reveal in certain
settings, to avoid being the target of negative reactions. Do
you?
And what’s the health cost of these efforts to fit in, versus the
potential cost of not fitting in?
Following June’s article about authenticity, “Permission to Be
Real,” (see the P.P.S. below for a link to the article) a long
time subscriber wrote this to me:
I struggled enough with my having large, often
dark freckles that I’ve always been sensitive
to others feeling “less than” because they
didn’t fit someone’s idea of being “just right.”
All that’s lacking in your story is the fact
that thousands of gay/lesbian types struggle
with the same issues, yet can’t mention them
to anyone who might help because they’re
“different” from all authority types; I have
several friends in this fix who have nowhere
to turn.
I can’t date them (I’ve been happily married
49 years to my wife,) and find it hard to
convince them that I ‘might have’ under
different conditions.
Please consider them also in your discussions
of being real/authentic despite how others
“put them down” as a matter of course because
they’re not Christian or legal or some other
stupid reason for treating them like dirt.
*** Thanks, my friend, for your wonderful contribution to this
conversation! Here are my thoughts to everyone reading…
Whatever the gender of your preferred intimate partner, there are
probably a few things about yourself or your past that you’d
rather the whole world not know about–or wish you could share
without fear.
This reminds me of a discussion by a wonderful teacher I
encountered last week, David Spangler. He was talking about the
way we identify ourselves, using the metaphor of skeletons. I
loved the metaphor for the way what supports us can also limit
us.
As mammals, our physical support comes from within. We have
internal skeletons–endoskeletons–of bone to which our flesh is
attached. This gives us tremendous freedom of movement, and
allows us to grow continuously.
At the same time, it makes us somewhat vulnerable to injury.
Invertebrates like lobsters and insects carry their skeletons
outside their soft bodies. They are more protected, but if they
are to grow, must shed their limiting exoskeletons and grow new
ones.
Our human identities, David explained, are often based on social
structures that, while they offer the sense of safety of
belonging, also limit our growth. These identities act like
exoskeletons.
At a certain point of growth, we must choose the temporarily
vulnerable position of being without the protective shell of
belonging, or risk suffocation.
You can probably think of the unspoken rules of membership in
your family, your community, your profession. You know what might
cause a person to be ostracized, or what makes a person popular.
If you think of the temptation to “blend in” by not revealing
certain information about yourself, or even pretending to be what
you’re not, and thus enjoy social protection, while at the same
time feeling constrained by not feeling safe to be yourself, you
also know what I mean.
For example, if you had an abortion, and belong to a family,
church or social group that disapproves of abortion, you might
not feel safe to reveal that you had one.
If everyone in your community and extended family disapproves of
any form of intimacy other than that between married adults of
opposite genders, and you are gay or lesbian, you get to choose
between hiding/pretending and risking ostracism.
The question is, which is the higher cost to your health and
well-being–revealing unpopular information, or hiding it?
This is where the question of identity becomes especially
important.
Who are you?
If you gain your entire sense of self from outside yourself–the
groups to which you belong, your status, gender, sexuality,
profession, even race–you will eventually feel the inner
conflict between your inherent expansion and the limitations of
approval from any groups that don’t favor individual expansion.
The more you base your sense of self on adherence to your own
inner core of unconditional love, your own set of personal rules
of integrity, the less dependent you are on the approval of
others.
In other words, if you operate primarily from the strength of
your inner skeleton, you have more freedom *and power* than if
you operate primarily from the strength of the social structures
around you.
If you think about this, you’ll recognize the difference in
charisma and influence between someone who is trying to control
you and get love and approval from you, versus someone who is
already filled with her or his own inner light and love.
This is true no matter what the social, religious, economic, or
professional position of that person.
It’s true whether you’re gay or straight, freckled or
plain-skinned, male or female, young or old, healthy or sick.
It’s true no matter what your history, race, or family.
This is not to say there’s no pain in rejection due to things you
can’t change in yourself or in others. Nor that there’s not a
difference between things you can’t hide or pretend, and things
you can.
But all the preaching or laws in the world aren’t going to make
all those “other” people treat you the way you’d like to be
treated. You can make yourself sick by focusing on the unfairness
or violence in the world.
Or you can remember that you’re a complex being who can never
please everyone, even if you are in the dominant group. Coming
out of whatever closet you may have hidden some aspects of your
identity will have its costs and benefits. You get to decide what
you show the world.
But your true authenticity lies inside of you, and has nothing to
do with what external social identities you express. Your ability
to connect authentically with others depends on your ability to
look beyond categories, and see the being behind the exterior.
The more you focus on your own inner light and love, and that of
others, the more you win.
No matter what.