Image: Jaroslav Devia
To be a warrior is to learn to be genuine in every moment of your life.
—Chogyam Trungpa
What is it about people that make you feel like you can be yourself in their presence? It’s not that they’re nice, they’re not all nice. It’s not that they’re gregarious, they’re not all gregarious. And it’s not that they’re friendly, they’re not all friendly.
So what then?
For one, they’re all vulnerable.
It sounds surprising but it’s true. They are all vulnerable. But the word doesn’t mean weak, as it is so often assumed. Vulnerability means opening one’s self to the possibility of being harmed. It means being exposed. It means risk.
All the things that happen when someone is authentic.
When someone is genuinely themselves, they lose the veneer that so many of us hide behind. They lose a made-up proxy to their real selves. If someone dislikes them then, their image is disliked, not their actual self. And that creates some existential stability.
The problem with this kind of thinking is that, from the perspective of others, there is no difference between the real self and the image.
At least, that difference is inconsequential. They don’t really care that there is a real, potentially likeable me stashed away behind a mask. They just assume that the mask is me. Moreover, they intuitively pick up that there is a discrepancy and attribute that to me too. Only, in this case, it is the real me that is being judged. That image didn’t put itself up.
Genuine people, on the other hand, instinctually understand this. They are happy to put their real selves forward and, even though it’s unpleasant, are okay with it being disliked. And the best of the lot understand that this fear is something many people experience. So they unconsciously create a space in which being vulnerable is fine.
This is an important point.
Think about that person that always makes you feel great. Why is it so? Likely, it’s because you don’t have to expend energy trying to watch what you’re saying, or worrying that you’re going to offend, or even projecting an image. By virtue of the fact that they are comfortable being themselves, and the fact that being themselves is a stronger disposition than not, they exhibit a kind of control over the frame, making it acceptable for everyone to just be within it.
What’s more interesting is that, while this seems to be almost universally true, it is the direct opposite of what we think is true. This is why so many of us create images in the first place. We feel like our authentic selves are not strong enough to handle the big harsh world.
But, eventually, our behaviour manipulates our selves. We become our images. Over time, there is no difference between the empty image we portray to the world and the authentic selves we tuck away. Worse, we end up believing the lie we tell others.
That image, however, can never measure up to who we actually are because it’s one dimensional. So when we buy that lie, we feel empty because we’re buying into the absolute shallowest version of ourselves.
Being genuine is hard—it’s a warriors feat. But it’s also easier than the alternative.
A few radical things
Here are a few radical things I discovered this week:
This week was pretty kak, if I am honest.
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