Really

So I’m on this journey. Like one of those things you buy into not knowing all that is involved, only to discover too late that it’s far more than you bargained for. Years ago, I had a small clip-out hanging on my wall: “I've always admired the person who could bite off more than they could chew – and then chew it.” How many times have I found myself in that spot! Sometimes it is best not to know the future or you’d never get out of bed.

I’m on this journey. I’m not sure I’ve made many big decisions to get me here, but I sure have made a lot of little ones fully unaware of unintended consequences far down the road.

One big decision I made a long time ago – or was it a matter of little choices becoming a habit? – was to live life as authentically as I could. I’m not sure I’ve always followed that ideal. After all, I like to be liked by the next person as much as the next person.

Well now, events have conspired so that most all the safety nets have been pulled away. When that happens, you don’t have to worry about risk – you risk no matter what you do, which in a way means whatever action you take is in some sense therefore risk-free. How can you really be risking if there is nothing left to lose?

OK, I still have a few things to lose, five to be exact. My wife and my kids. Oh, and life itself – mine. Still, relatively speaking, already being in free-fall, it is much easier to live the authentic life, if that is your goal, and I realize it really is.

I’m on this journey. And I want it to be as authentic as possible. Why? I don’t know. Because authenticity, for whatever reason, seems to give life meaning?

Then what does it mean to be authentic? (Quick look at the dictionary) Genuine. Real. Sounds fine. Real what?

My wife used to have this clipping (we have clipped a lot in our lives) of this mass of penguins, all look-alikes to the human eye. One of them stands up above all the rest and says “I gotta be me!” Which of all those penguins is the authentic one? One who looks and acts like penguins do? Or the one who stands out and says, “I gotta be me”?

I don’t know about penguins, but I have a feeling that as far as humans are concerned, the human who asks questions like, “Who am I really?” and “What makes me genuine?” is the authentic human. Case in point, Rene Descartes’ famous statement, “I think therefore I am.” I threw that in to sound refined (how’s that for authentic?) and, more importantly, to take off on what Descartes was saying.

Humans think, or at least that is what they are supposed to do. When they really do think, they are more likely to be authentically human than when they don’t. Most times most people don’t think – at least not much. They just plow straight ahead. But when life gets wacky and there is no more “straight ahead” to plow, it makes one start to really think. And that person, just maybe, starts to be human. So the authentic journey I’m on is a human, thinking one. At least that’s the goal, I think.