A Quest for Authenticity

I am reading the introductory pages tonight of a book by Sheila Bender. It's called A Year in the Life: Journaling for Self-Discovery. I am reading these pages because I do not have time to read the book itself. I discoverd with some surprise this afternoon that this and the other writing book I had been reading were written by the same author, both published in association with Writer's Digest. I am reading them because she writes a chapter in the book about making a contract with yourself to write, a sort of hiring yourself as your own writer, and because the book goes back to the library tomorrow with the others.

I am alarmed somewhat by the emphasis of both of Bender's books on self-discovery, alarmed because I fear that I am already too self-absorbed, that we are a self-absorbed culture, and that "discovering yourself", your voice, etc., could only serve to increase that self-absorption. But then I realize that to have an authentic experience of the world, one that can be described, is to see the world as it really is, and to see yourself in the same way. But here I verge on some dangerous territory as the warning sounds inside my brain, the warning which purpose is to keep me from being or doing much of anything.

I want to become less self-absorbed, not more so. If understanding myself better allows me to have an authentic interaction with the cashier at the grocery store or the stranger at my door, instead of reverting to automatic answers, and thoughtless aversions, I shall be well satisfied.

I think of those Jehovah's Witnesses at my door last year, and how difficult it was to make any sort of statement to them about any of the things I really think or believe, how easy it was to let them run all over me, and to feel utterly defeated upon their leaving, defeated because I had been unable to say one true thing to them.

My lifelong quest is a quest for authenticity.

I wouldn't claim that Sheila Bender's theories about journaling are the answer to that quest, but she certainly has some things to say that interest me.