On Being Authentic

I was thinking about how I have come full circle with a lot of things in my life.

Like, with things like healthy eating. Going from being so dogmatic about it, to being more relaxed... to now being at an in between place where I can sit back and actually think about how I want it to be.

Same for with drinking.

Or spending money.

I've kind of gone through a process with all of these things, and I'm now at a point where I'm like, "Where do I want to be in regards to ________ in my life?" And I can come at it from a different, broader, more open perspective than I was before.

Take going out to eat, for instance. I want to really look at something like that and I want to determine what *I* think about it? Do I choose to go somewhere because it's what I can afford? Do I not like a restaurant because it's "too mainstream"? Am I being influenced by what my friends like and what other people think in making my decisions? Am I being influenced by my upbringing, and trying to be better than everything I deem as too small-town? Etc.

I just want to authentically determine what it is that *I* like and want out of life. It's all part of the process of self-discovery, I guess, and now that I feel that I've gone full circle through a lot of these things, I am finally able to make those discoveries.

Take that Portlandia-esque "Simpsons" episode that recently aired. Crunchiness, hipsters... everything just becomes a caricature unto itself, and it becomes laughable.

Or that picture of a hipster that I posted once, where it said: "Likes mainstream. Because hating mainstream is too mainstream."

Which got me to thinking... how much of this stuff do I gravitate to because I value it, or am I doing things just because I like to be alternative. To be different.

As I said in my blog post about those freaking owls, "Mostly, I tend to like things that are different (and unique), because I like to be different (and unique). But that seems like a rather poor reason to like (or not like) something, and, as I said before, it has become a modality unto itself."

I want to like things and want things authentically, and I think I am able to do more so now that I have come full circle. Even if those things end up being the exact same things I've liked in the beginning. That is not the point. The point is that the process was important in the reasoning behind all of it.


“Be who God meant you to be and you will set the world on fire.” - St. Catherine of Siena