I met a lovely therapist at dinner a few nights ago and one of the subjects was authenticity. She brought it up. I wanted to know what it means in the current world of psychotherapy. As best I can tell from her description, it dealt with the identity that is most durable in the therapy client’s everyday presentation of his/her self.
I wrote a blog on authenticity more than two years ago. It was an explanation of my views on it at the time and why actual authenticity is only accessible in a commercial world. I’ll stick with that description and recommend you read it.
What I missed in that blog was to mention one of my sources, Charles Taylor, a philosophy professor at McGill who taught my friend Alex.
I need to add to my earlier blog that authenticity becomes evident in a commercial environment as one encounters the great variety of challenges in everyday life. The myriad complexities, paradoxes and ambiguities bring out this emergent quality that we call 'authenticity'. Most of all it emerges as one accepts and rejects the infinite array of opportunities that are offered.
What I want to add is that each person is offered an infinite array of opportunities that often are presented to us by others who know us. It is the array of offers from friends and acquaintances that are uniquely important. We surround ourselves with people who reflect our values and important qualities. It is these people who then offer us opportunities that are especially important in bringing out our authentic self.
As an example, one of the turning points in my life was when I went from being a rising star in banking to being in the center of the hurricane of hippy life. That happened when I became manager of the Glide Church and Foundation. That job was offered to me by Don Kuhn who had known me for seven years in our joint work trying to fix the San Francisco public education system. (Photo below.)
The actual moment I made this vital and fateful decision was when two pairs of people walked up the beach on a warm summer evening when my girlfriend (Sharon) and I were building a fire to roast some potatoes. The first couple had a folding table and offered an elegant dinner with champagne. He was the fellow who offered me the job as national director of banking for the biggest consulting firm. A stepping stone to being the president of a major bank. I politely declined.
The next couple was Don Kuhn and his wife Emogene who offered to join us and share their hamburger fixings. They joined us. A few weeks later I went to work at Glide.
It is people around us who see the qualities in us that need to be nourished and help us emerge.