Brief Thoughts On Authenticity

In these recent years, one of the shifts that I have tried to make in my life is to live it with a greater sense of authenticity. As I have gone about it, it made to start by reaching a clearer sense of what it meant to be authentic in the first place?

In general terms, authenticity is often understood as the quality of being original. Of being ingenious. Of being unique. And in the modern world we live in, it can also be seen as “being the first.” As helpful as those markers are for gauging authenticity, I see them as effects of authenticity rather than the cause.

So what causes authenticity? I feel the root of authenticity lies in being honest and transparent. When we are honest and transparent with ourselves and others, we are bound to touch a tender and raw point. A point that is not trying to conform to something external. That honors our individual experience rather than discounts it. That encourages us to face it till we make it in a world that insists on faking it.

Once we can get to this point, it is only natural for it to beget something unique, something original, something new, something never done. Something authentic.