Authenticity Paradox.
A man once asked me, “Who are you?” Back then, I couldn’t answer him. I was in India, searching for myself and trying to figure out who I really was. Later, I realised the real me was schizophrenic. So even now, it depends on how I feel. That last part was a joke, by the way.
Can you picture a spiritual person with schizophrenia, always searching for themselves? That would be a quest with no end.
Anyway, moving on. I often wonder who I really am. I don’t have many real friends—maybe none—and I never feel comfortable in large groups of people who aren’t me.
What does it even mean to be ‘authentic’? Once you start thinking about it, you can’t really be it. Chasing authenticity is like searching for the holy grail—does it even exist? If you read too many books or watch too many YouTube gurus talk about authenticity, you end up so focused on it that it just turns into a kind of ‘cosplay’.
This is how I act when I’m trying to be authentic…
Humans are funny. The best moments are when we don’t even notice it. It’s almost comical how seriously we take ourselves—except now, our inflated egos and self-delusion give us the power to destroy the world.
What I’m really asking is: what is the self? What does it mean to be self-aware?
But does it even matter? If you ask ten people to describe you, you’ll probably get ten different answers.
The real you is what others see when they interact with you, and you’ll never truly know what that is. Why? Because we all lie to get by. Do people ever really tell you the truth about how they see you?
If they did, I suspect no one would have real friends, and there would probably be more conflict.
So here we are, and here I am, trying to figure out if I’m authentic. Maybe my real self is just someone who looks for answers to questions nobody asked—not about engineering or economics, but these semi-spiritual questions we all seem to have these days.
At least now I’ve stopped asking about the ‘meaning’ of life. I’ve accepted that there isn’t really a point, and whether we live or die, the planet keeps turning, and the universe keeps expanding. So there’s no real ‘meaning’, but since you’re here, you might as well try to enjoy yourself between birth and death. Try to live an interesting life—it would be a shame not to.
That’s what I’m doing now—writing this nonsense nobody asked for, but you’re reading it anyway. Pretty cool, right? Maybe it’s so original that it’s actually authentic.
But does it really matter?
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