live authentically

I want to celebrate the unabashed joy of silly humor! I like it and its goofiness around me! I like to tell silly jokes unapologetically, and squee with the anticipation of the listeners’ faux scorn turning into helpless laughter.
I want to be regaled, too, with humor so dopey I squirm knowing I’ll think myself lame for laughing out loud.
I will never tire of Spam or the Knights of Nee, or Mr. Creosote, although the latter makes me cringe a little.

Unabashed joy of silly humor is a good authentic thing in my book!

I was thinking…

Another part of the discussion on authenticity must include the mentorship or partnership of kindred that is mentioned off and on through the meandering of this discourse. I won’t get too heavy or circuitous about it, but it occurs to me that on our paths we often seek the affirmation or advice of brethren as assurance we are seen as both authentic and cared for on what amounts to be a singular journey.
We look for our kindred as we begin. We want their acknowledgment.
We look to them when we take successive steps down our respective paths. We want their attention and we want them to walk the road a bit with us if it gets lonely and we are afraid.
We look to them for advice and love if the going gets too tough or we get sidetracked or regretful or bogged down by challenges that disorient us. We want their trust. We want to know they’re with us, understanding, trusting.
We look to them on their own parallel journeys, singing each to each. We want to share with them.
We look to them as we realize ourselves, recognize authenticity. We then want to be with them forever, sharing and never clinging.

Crikey! If it sounds like I have pat answers, I don’t. I’ve recently been able, in this life, to guide some of my kindred in ways I would not think I was qualified, yet in ways I would not hesitate to do over and over again without thinking. The key, I think, is recognizing one’s kindred, and taking one’s risk with kindred instead of stepping back and looking at them apart from us when daunted by an imagined inadequacy.

I’ll never stop looking to my kindred. I’ll never stop giving to them, either.

My regrets are few.
If my life is mine,
what shouldn’t I do?
I get wherever I’m going,
I get whatever I need
while my blood’s still flowing
and my heart still beats.”

No pressure, hmm, just gentle exuberance. I met a woman Saturday night who wore a dream-catcher around her neck and her eyes blazed with spirit. She and I talked together, and, sensing a fellow authenticity-seeker, she opened up her world of unabashed pursuit of opportunity. She is fearless, and every time she caught me replying “Yes, but…” she shook her head and stopped me. She wouldn’t let me impart my questioning cynicism, and I am now glad of that. She’s smart. She has many obstacles in her life, like the rest of us, but she doesn’t see them as obstacles as I sometimes do. She sees them as challenges that will ignite her mental and physical energies to live fully. She is doing much and doesn’t analyze to the point of exhaustive inertia as I sometimes do. When we parted company, she placed her palm up to mine and told me two secrets. I went home with her good energy.

I have what I feel is a genuine enjoyment of friendly connection with people, which is sometimes, unfortunately, construed by a different kind of personality as needy leanings or calls for attention. It is neither. It reflects good fortune and that which is in my nature to delight in meeting all kinds of good souls: neighbors, cab drivers, shopkeeps, the waiter who knows to bring me my drink without being asked, the grade four lad who offers to teach me to throw a baseball less like a girl, et al. These are good things, these connections; together with strong friendships and relationships these bring me authenticity in steps. They solidify one’s essence and brighten the spirit. When I listen to small criticism that suggests there is something underlying about the pleasure of day-to-day connectiveness, I can begin to doubt. And doubt seeds itself into an effacement of character, which then begins a process of erosion of authenticity.
I will not turn down the volume on spiritedness. I will be willful and ebullient, on my oddy-knocky or with others. Gentle exuberance!

I still don’t know what the progress of authenticity means one day to the next. I know that a threshold of thought and reason has been crossed, that I cannot go back to thinking or feeling in a way that denies authenticity or its progress. But though I can see the “a” of it and I can envision a future “z”, it’s the middle letters I find difficult (though I intuit not impossible) to negotiate.
I find it unthinkable to loosen the grip of progression; I know it is the denial of one’s soul to regress to the pseudo-comfort of inertia. I also find it daunting to be pro-active instead of reactive… this may be the subtlety or demureness of letting the universe’s tiny nudges steer a step here and there, guided by stated goals, fellow travellers, kindred.
I wonder what is worse – impatience with one’s reluctance to jump into authenticity fully and opportunely, or impatience with feeling one must wait for a universal signal to begin the procession to ultimate happiness?

^Mollie?

in a quest for living authentically. I see either-or situations popping up everywhere, yet insist that authenticity is a journey that involves a series of many steps and choices, not merely a shedding of a skin or cocoon.
It seems possible that opening up one’s heart to opportunity and one’s ear to hear it knocking (thank you verrin) yields the best of hope and intention.
Yo mama! That feels a lot like another big baby step.

^{(And where’s MollieK?)}

I do not live authentically. I merely understand authenticity, speak of it, want and need to embrace it, and regard it as necessary here and now, not in some distant golden moment when I hobble over to it.

Recognizing this difficulty, I hope, does not make me infirm of purpose, only bound by ropes I constructed over a long period of time. They constrict me and I know enough to breathe. But how?

I am eager to talk myself into some kind of action that hoists me from inertia – the thing I can rant about for hours on end, the thing that feels beaten just by railing against it.
Here it is: (deep breath)

I am ready for opportunity. Whatever it is, I will recognize it and use it to shape authentic goals.
I think the first opportunity may be recognizing others who are like-minded, and sharing visions for honesty and change. I shan’t keep my distance any longer. There – a big baby step!

means knowing and cultivating one’s personal honesty and integrity. It means not being cowed or coerced into a lesser self, but acknowledging what one wants without lapsing into disintegration of spirit or desperation.
That’s easy if not lugubrious to say. Lights are sometimes dimmed in one’s house. Convention and acquiescence shape our path. And weeding the garden’s sometimes a pain.

I want unabashed Beauty, enough to give and receive, from others and everything, in word and gesture and in all I see and touch. I want Truth to discern it from chicanery, mere existence, darkness.

A little list, with heft!

for better or worse, I will not cling to convention for the sake of convenience. Gathering gumption to live authentically is hard for those of us who have sublimated. There’s a lot of cosmic dust being kicked up. May as well get a broom and join in. (I can always use the broom as a getaway vehicle if need be, later.)