The character of a person will not be found in their words but in their actions over time
We know words matter naught. Anyone can say anything and do nothing.
Easy is it to sit in the stands and throw tomatoes and expletives at the person doing the work.
Our whole world thrives on illusion. The Insta shot, all glamor, no substance. Staged PR. The media training that has public figures look vulnerable, sound vulnerable, repeat the well-rehearsed line. Not real. An act. The photo op. Good lighting.
It is no wonder the word authenticity has become so co-opted. Perhaps we hope that if we say it enough it will happen. Authenticity has gone missing.
From the same etymological root as author and authority, authenticity is a form of self-authoring. Writing the true story of self. Not the spin story.
To be an author of your life is to have authority. To stand in your essential who-ness, your integrity, and be incapable of diminishment for being your essence.
It means you can take a stand for something, a cause, and be present in the heat as those who oppose you speak, not losing your authorship, yet remaining open to listening to understand them. It means that if someone accuses you of something for which you know you are innocent, you do not hide. You come out of the shadows and speak with authority of your innocence, unafraid of the truth you are.
The authentic character of a person is not their words. It is their actions over time. Over a lot of time. It is what they do when no one is watching.
It is why we revere Nelson Mandela, Gandhi. Their Pattern Integrity, consistency, and wholehearted authenticity were evident at every step.
Today we have spin doctors and showmen. We have sycophants, we are drowning in a cesspit of hypocrisy. Vacuous words and promises made. No substance.
To be authentic, to author your life, to be comfortable in your own authorship, means that you have embraced the aspects of self that are afraid, small, childlike, dominant, nasty, petty…you know your character, you have enough self-awareness to know the conditions in which your shadow self comes out to play, and you do what is needed to limit the inappropriate conditions in which these parts of you run riot.
To arrive at a place where you love the whole of you, the bumpy, broken, fractured, nasty, lost…and every shade in-between, this is to be at a place of authenticity.
Words spoken from here are not staged. They are a transmission.
Photo taken March 12th 2016
