Tag: authenticity

JC’s Ethos

Posted on by Marko

He relished in unabashed authenticity. It’s also how JC loved you – perfectly un-fairytale-like and imperfectly human. It felt real in every sense, with no traces of conditioning, transactionality, or reciprocity for reciprocity’s sake. He gave because he wanted to. Took when he needed to. Reminded you of life’s priorities when you had forgotten them. No sugar-coating or repressing. He was just a cat – as most humans would put it – but to me he was a person with more depth and presence than many humans I’ve known. He let you into his world, with wide eyes and acknowledging meows, chrips, and purrs.

He didn’t care much for politeness and good behaviour. To him, they were inauthentic and wasteful of time and opportunity. I agreed, and thanked his sagely feistiness those few times I mindlessly addressed him as just a cat. He cared for showing you how he felt and what he wanted, with no second-guessing or reservations. JC was an empath, checking in every few minutes by reading your eyes – their lines, tension, shape. He knew the mood you were in, even if you weren’t admitting it to yourself. Stoicism didn’t fool him – he knew me for the emotional person that I am, and that emotionality is also where him and I connected: perfectly excitable when called for, and equally frustrated when our freedom-flapping wings got clipped.

Some people meditate to recenter and regain composure. I do too, except my meditation now includes a mental image of JC, which reminds me of the kind of relationships I wish to forge with others, and myself.

On Love

Posted on by Marko

Love is not a binary state, it is a process with no boundaries. We don’t fall in or out of love, we feel more or less connected to someone. Love is a shade, not a colour.

Love is not exclusive to romance – it drives every relationship, regardless of its nature. You cannot control love, nor does it respond to your will and needs. Love happens naturally, spontaneously when you don’t try, when you surrender to the moment and the person before you, and only if they do the same. No intentions or objectives, merely an open-hearted presence.

You don’t love everyone with the same intensity, but if you feel a connection with them, then you do love them. Acknowledging love is not shameful. It doesn’t make you weaker, nor is it a risk one takes. Expressing your feelings – your love – through genuine thoughts, words, and actions is a strength – an act that honours a relationship. It is needed to sustain love, to renew it from moment to moment, and prevent it from becoming a habit.

Love ebbs and flows. We change, and that will reflect on every relationship. Change should not be feared – it is universal, and drives life itself. Choking your own growth for the sake of preserving a relationship is not love, it is dependence. It may preserve a structure of a relationship but its essence, the love that underlies it, will be gone. When an ebb does come, it represents an opportunity for renewal, which allows relationships to evolve and never fall into static habits.

Fear Ebbs Flow

Posted on by Marko

Fear, in any form, chokes life. It dulls our senses of curiosity and exploration, curbing risk-taking while prioritizing the familiar, conservative, safe. It makes us dependent on something (or someone) that’s known, giving us a superficial form of psychological safety.

But life is not meant to be a loop, a routine, a well-treaded path, no matter how scenic or comforting it may be. Phobias and fears of things in life are often the result of our mode of being, shaped by limited experience. How we perceive ourselves relative to other people, our surroundings, to the universe, its meaning. Fear prevents us from stepping outside the marked path to make our own. And the more we conform to a pre-treaded path, the stronger the resistance to veering off it – and living. We become static – an impossibility in life that, by its very nature, is dynamic.

This illusion of safety – that we know things, that things don’t change – hardens us into moulds of our familiar environments. And as any other mould whose shape is predetermined, we live and produce monotony. Our life becomes an assembly line of tasks more than a microcosm of creative opportunities. Fear chokes life, it inhibits our authenticity and suppresses creativity. It ebbs our unscripted self expression, and genuine connection to everything.

To live and experience life to its fullest, you must take a risk and step forward. Like a toddler learning how to walk, every step is both scary and exciting because we can fall but also get farther. Embrace fear of the unknown, for it’s a signal that you are living, that you are getting to know more of the universe, and through it, your deeper self.

The Charisma of Being

Posted on by Marko

At any moment, we have the choice of being or thinking, taking life in or trying to understand it. We instinctively strive to strike a balance between the two, but social pressures, overachievement, attachment, and deep-seeded insecurities often pin us to the thinking side of things. We overthink, therefore, we cannot be. When we think, we don’t act. We don’t show our colours. We are absent because we are in our minds, interpreting, projecting, estimating. Our awareness retreats, and with it our animation and idiosyncrasies. When we think, our personalities are closer to that of a computer than a sentient life-form. A mostly-thinker, no matter how academically brilliant, often has little charisma, a product of their reserved, withdrawn personality. They have little presence, and offer few draws for others to get to know them.

Of course, thinking is essential to one’s survival and understanding of the world. It’s the first thing we learn, but I’d like to argue it’s a predominant thing we are taught throughout our lives in this so-called modern society. An intellectual world is not a lived world, but a projected one. We think, therefore we are, but what we are is not who we are.

Thinking needs the right input for a truthful output, and that input comes through being – experiencing without labeling, engaging without expecting, listening without projecting. In short, not pre-thinking. When raw materials of life enter us as they are, we feel stimulated by their newness, and consequently, our curiosity. We process them through our unique, natural lens. We interpret the universe as it expresses itself through us, not the way we are expected to see it. And because we add a fresh perspective to our society, we stand out, in the most natural, un-egotistical way possible. The way everyone, in their unique way, has a potential of standing out. This is the charisma that inspires motivation, not envy, attraction, not attachment. It is also the essential ingredient to any truthful, selfless relationship.

Expose Yourself

Posted on by Marko

When we feel shame, we conform. And when we conform, we betray ourselves, our authentic nature, by acting the way others expect us to act. The feeling of shame is a keystone to so many of our insecurities. It holds us back through the fear of being judged by someone else’s standards. Ironically, we think when we submit to conformation, we’ll be liked more, but such appeal is very superficial, lacking substance to create real social bonds.

Feeling ashamed on any level weakens us, suppresses us. It can be the way we look, dress, think, talk, philosophize, laugh, feel, – any authentic expression or idiosyncrasy that represents our essential identity.

Shame is a powerful, primal emotion that separates. By feeling shame, we create distance between us and the people in our lives. Shame makes us less authentic, at best, right down to inauthentic, at worst. When we’re ashamed, we’re more likely to be covert and cautious with our genuine feelings and thoughts about something. We communicate partial truths or override them altogether. The result of all this self-censoring is our inability to form and maintain meaningful and authentic social bonds. If there is no genuine attraction between people, which comes about through freespiritedness of expression, there is also no way to form genuine relationships.

So I say, expose yourself. Be naked and generous in your expression: your opinions, views, creativity, feelings, compassion, giving, and especially loving. It may feel painful at first (for it is practiced by few), but it is also empowering, both to self, and to your relationships.

Don’t follow others, inspire them by being unapologetically you.

Present Tension

Posted on by Marko

Living in the present starts with the fundamental belief that you can change now. Now exists, the future does not, the past has passed. The first is real, the other two are either fantasy or history. The first anchors you to life, the other two remove you from it.

Since our language describes our relationship to the world, we can start embracing the present there. Instead of having three strictly defined temporal tenses, let’s reduce them to two: Present Expressed and Present Expressing. Both are real-time, both describe life as it naturally flows, but neither pins you to a point in history or anticipation of future events. Imagine that both tenses describe a natural evolution of the universe, in which you participate in your own authentic, natural manner. If you need labels, you can call it grace, destiny, fate or whatever else points you toward that process. As the universe unfolds, so does time – time measured not through minutes or seconds, but through changes in and around us. Those changes that have taken place are part of Present Expressed, a tense describing the form and course that the universe has naturally taken. The Present Expressing represents the continual evolution of the universe and our participation in it. We are all variables within this tense, and we all matter, so long as we embrace our authenticity. Through or without it, we steer the evolution of the universe to some infinitesimal degree.

The right behaviour is authentic behavior, and this behaviour expresses itself through our continual decisions. Don’t ask yourself if this is the right thing to do – ask yourself if this is the authentic thing to do. Are you acting from within or out of fear or imposed duty? The form that our lives, and by extension the universe (sum total of every life and everything), assume after an authentically expressed decision, will be natural and right, because it comes from a natural place. Think of yourself as an element, like oxygen or helium. Each element behaves in its own, unique way because of its nature, and yet together they hold the universe together and are part of its continual evolution.

Genuine Disobedience

Posted on by Marko

You cannot make a connection with those who seek validation, followers, or spotlight. There is no space for the whole of you, just your obedience. You are their ego fodder or accessory, not a person, not a friend. If you care about those people, the best thing you can do is challenge them. Or at least stand up for your beliefs and opinions, no matter how hard they try to steamroll over them. If they persist, walk away. Relationships are built on agreements and differences, glue and fertilizer. Both should be respected and explored – they are the premise and promise of a human connection.