COLUMN: Finding authenticity

One thing common to us all is life. Each one of us is here living right now. None of us know how we got here, yet we are here. All we know is life; death is the enigma foreshadowing the play of our lives. Some individuals care little for the bigger questions, and others more so.

With age and maturity comes a turn to the existential inquires. For me, I muse about existence and anyone who encounters me knows this. This is a life truly lived.

From my inward and outward travels, I’ve found a few words to describe how to live: Breathe, live life and be kind.  In other words, enjoy the little things of life and be open to all people.

As opposed to how philosophy is conducted today in academics, I support a return to the basics. Questions, whose birth is from the womb of Greek minds, are simple like this: “What makes Man happy, and in what way should we conduct our life?” The answer is not so simple, because individuals must determine their own inner law.

Instead of being the vehicle for real expression, words are used to protect ourselves in games of myriad variety — staying as safe as possible behind appearances so as to not have to endanger or compromise oneself. In other words, never wanting to look foolish. This is the problem. All that lives is different, expresses itself without abatement and is without justification or compromise.

In the marketplace of ideas, there are countless books and systems, many of them absolutely senseless. I’m too simple for those.  So much is just empty chatter.

Rather than dealing

with metaphysical questions, which are really self-made problems, we should return to ourself so we may see clearly. I have no intention of sermonizing, but I ask to what avail is knowledge when experience is slipping from us as sand in an hourglass? If we are not happy, then what is the point? This is the true question we should be addressing.

Authenticity is something we all struggle with. At each moment we are in a constant struggle to be ourself while amidst so many objects which seem to pull us away.  From attachment comes a tension between self and world, hence there is suffering. It is silly really.

Personally, in addition to poetry and song, I find moments to be worthwhile; the former two sort of remove us from our trivial concerns, while the moment is where we live our life. We are something different each subsequent moment after the next.

Tasting cucumbers, the weight of a glass

A joke telling

What follows is a short poem I find elevating and soothing simultaneously.

Frolicking

No worries beset me, just playing around, going in to try it out

A morning arisen sun with sprinkles, colored ones, on oatmeal

Swaying trees, a soft breeze with a glass of cold lemonade

May the muse speak through emotion to the soul, as the dance goes on

And life whirls around us as falling leaves in Autumn

It never ceases to be old, the tastes of coffee and the gulp of cold, fresh, morning drafts. Interestingly, it is never actually the thing itself that we delight in; rather it is the enjoyer of delights, our self, we like to experience. Many search for this in temples and groups, but it is available everywhere, and we don’t even need anything except the simple things of life.

Nobody can give us what we want. Instead, it is we who either accept or reject the thing.  In the end, it is found what we are seeking is really what we already possess – and our striving is so absurd.