About a week ago, a conversation took place between myself and two of the female students that I have in small group; there was an undeniable amount of attention directed towards the authenticity (or lack thereof) of most individuals that we interact with on a regular basis. Needless to say most of these unauthentic and unspoken individuals that we were picturing in our minds all happened to be of the female gender.
A probing question that kept coming up during our conversation was, why is it that people seem to lack a genuine ability to be authentic? There's always something to be revealed or to be kept hidden especially among women. I am of the belief that women are continually undergoing a process of keeping some aspect about themselves hidden. We seem to think we can't let our guard down for fear of discovery or for fear that we will reveal that we actually have fears and doubts and maybe at times moments of irrationality.
I'm not meaning to badger too much on the female gender because men can be just as guilty of unauthenticity as women. Society warrants that we not reveal too much and not care so much for the well-being of others it would seem. Think about the last time you ran into an old friend or an acquaintance in public...perhaps the conversation went something like this: "Hey how are doing?" "Good!" "That's great" "It's good to see you!"and etc....
Think about it...was it really great to see them? Did you really want to know how their job was going or did you feel like you had to ask for the sake of the conversation? On the flip side, maybe you weren't feeling great but saying that you were doing good just happened to be the more socially accepted and most common response to that question...
In my opinion, people need to start getting real with each other. Remember the whole bit on honesty being the best policy? If society and our cultural norms didn't stand in our way, we definitely be a people radiating authenticity and true genuineness comes straight from the heart.
