Acceptance and love. Authenticity part 2.

Hey team, I have been back into my understanding of authenticity and wrote this as a collection of different ideas I've taken in and conclusions I've come to.

Accepting your authenticity, exactly as it is and nothing more, emerges as the remedy for suffering. This acceptance extends to acknowledging the limitations and randomness of your origin. Birth thrusts individuals into the privilege lottery, encompassing both known hardships associated with factors like skin color and family wealth, and more profoundly, the unique personalities of parents, siblings, teachers, and friends that significantly shape one's worldview and expectations.

These expectations become ingrained, influencing the persona we construct and how strongly we identify with it. They often manifest as conditional love, implying acceptance only if certain criteria are met. While this might align with societal norms, it is not the true essence of love. True love is the acceptance of someone at every new moment, unburdened by preconceived expectations. The idea of loving someone for who you wish they were, rather than their authentic self, is a fallacy rooted in false concepts of acceptance and love. This applies to both ends; as the recipient of expectations, we may feel pressured to meet certain criteria to be valued and loved—a subjective reality that might not align with actuality.

To love someone authentically is to embrace them in their present moment. Believing that people don't change is a perspective challenged by the constant physical and psychological transformations inherent in life. Your friend from 5 years ago is not the same person today, nor will they be the same person in another 5 years. Acknowledging this dynamic nature allows for a more genuine form of love and acceptance, recognizing that both ourselves and others are continuously evolving entities. The static nature of this very moment is the only constant, making moment-to-moment acceptance and love the only viable approach. And acceptance of others as they are, growing and changing yet forever imperfect and flawed, is only possible if we can accept ourselves. To accept others for being imperfect and incapable of meeting preconceived expectations, yet not accept ourselves with our flaws and fallacies, is to position oneself above being human—a notion none of us can claim. To believe, “others are imperfect, but I am a failure if I myself am imperfect,” is nothing more than an ignorant and arrogant statement that we must let go of. Many of us have no problem helping out a close friend or community member in need but have a great blind spot to our own well-being. I believe we must not forget about or pretend to be above being vulnerable and recognizing that we need care. We are all dependents; we cannot fully be left to our own devices in isolation without losing a part of us.

This profound acceptance extends to embracing both faults and virtues that define us. Acknowledging the existence of a shadow within, capable of harm and denial, and recognizing that the persona and ego we adopt are mere masks, opens the door to a more authentic and liberated existence. This existence of being an authentic self transcends all setbacks and hardships of modern-day. We can be exploited, mere pawns of the system, yet still live authentic and fulfilling lives. What we are forced to do or how our society/community labels us has nothing to do with who we truly are. Until we understand this concept, we will stay miserable, ever attached to an identity and mask we didn’t have a say in.  To end with a beautiful quote that encompasses this message  “I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to become”- Carl Jung.