The Daily Word
authenticity - n. - state of being real, original
Sometime before Christmas, a “friend” of mine (potential paramour), who is a psycho-analyst in L.A., had redecorated his office and wanted to give me a tour of it on Zoom. At one point, he paused before a box of words and told me that he allows his clients to pick from it and “own” the term selected. As I couldn’t do so myself, he picked for me. My choice, or really, his choice, was “authenticity.” After the unveiling, he noted, “Oh, that’s a good one for you.” Ouch! Immediately, I wondered what he meant as it struck me as an accusation. Hadn’t I always been upfront, honest, and totally transparent with him?
As I gazed around the room displayed on my laptop’s screen, I noticed that someone had drawn a cartoonish moon and a few stars on his white board. When I asked whether one of his clients is an artist, he confessed that one of his “friends” (most likely a former lover) had left it there for him after hours, and he forgot to erase it. (Hmm. After hours? Moon and stars? As in “You are the moon and the stars to me”?) As nothing more was volunteered about the mysterious, female, spontaneous sketcher, I came to the conclusion that he was the one who needed to look closely at the concept of authenticity as he surely was not being genuine with me.
What am I suggesting here? If you want to feel better about yourself, just be real. Be authentic. Be honest. It may not feel good in the moment because you may feel as though you could be injuring another with your candor; but in the end, even though outright veracity may hurt, after a while, it feels more like a pinprick as opposed to an equivocator’s stab in the back when you finally find out the gospel truth. Just sayin’.
#inspiration. #words. #vocabulary. #writers. #poets. #readers
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