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J. FdJChina, 2007
They're not fond of rules, and they have no respect
for the status-quo. You can quote them, disagree with them, glorify, or vilify them. But the only thing you can't do is ignore them. Because they change things. They push the human race forward. And while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world, are the ones who do.”
Jack Kerouac
I remain grateful for the non-conformist and free spirited core of my family. Their outlook on life and how they practice living life fully, allows for greater depth, intimacy, and complexity.
They each strive to be in the moment, wherever, and with whomever they are with. Their eccentricities are based in believing in the necessity of individualism...not only for themselves, but for all those they encounter.
Sharing and learning at this authentic level has deep and lasting ripple effects...changing and cultivating perspectives, understanding and insight. One moment and one experience at a time. Let the ripples launch, commence, and transform...
-grassrootsmsw-
They each strive to be in the moment, wherever, and with whomever they are with. Their eccentricities are based in believing in the necessity of individualism...not only for themselves, but for all those they encounter.
Sharing and learning at this authentic level has deep and lasting ripple effects...changing and cultivating perspectives, understanding and insight. One moment and one experience at a time. Let the ripples launch, commence, and transform...
-grassrootsmsw-
4 comments:
Wondering about how authenticity seems to be related to things we appreciate, while change we don't like - such as your entry about loyalties that were unfounded - seems about lack of integrity.
Perhaps we have to admit that people and institutions change ... and for me - does that make them not authentic? Or am I just not able to accept that they have changed? Or that perhaps my expectation was unrealistic?
I'm concluding that I don't trust the term authentic - the rest I'm still trying to sort out!
Thought-provoking, no?
Loyalty by definition is "faithfulness or a devotion to a person, duty, custom or cause."
"Authenticity consists in having a true and lucid consciousness of the situation, in assuming the responsibilities and risks that it involves in accepting it in pride or humiliation, sometimes in horror or hate." Sartre
There are commonalities and differences between the two. Each individual will perceive and interpret them in the way(s) they need to. We are all, always, still sorting it out...we are all still learning...
Right - guess that was the point.
Hopefully grassrootsmsw doesn't feel obligated to provide
"answers", if this is really a place for exchange of ideas.
There are many who would dispute Sartre as a choice to define authenticity, including students of the Dalai Lama and George Bernard Shaw.
Perhaps my comment should be more direct - "authenticity" seems to be a term often employed about things the writer supports, including times when a person or institution performs or changes in a way congruent with the writer's own beliefs.
When the person or institutional change is something the author/
writer does not support or is uncomfortable with, terms such as "disappointment" and "lack of integrity" or "not being worthy of loyalty" creep in.
Often, including in previous entries here, there are statements about relationships - "well, you/they changed and the other person just couldn't handle it," which clearly are not necessarily consistent with the foregoing.
My point was - if one professes to believe that relationships between individuals should just weather the storms when one individual changes and the other doesn't, or does so at a different pace - how is that substantially different than an insitution changing - or not changing - and how should one respond?
Does that really make the insitution somehow not authentic, or less authentic than the individual who may have changed??
Or is it possible that one should not give so much weight to the individual precisely because we are all so - well - changeable?!
Thank you for your insights and willingness to share them in this open space.
This blog is about sharing ideas, thoughts, perceptions, and the like. There are no answers being proposed, rather moments or experiences that have struck a chord...not always my personal experience...sometimes as a witness to another's experience.
Undoubtedly, everything and everyone is changeable. Sometimes we, as individuals, can manage this gracefully and with ease. I, for one, am usually awkward and clumsy when needing to adapt to change...I find that much more interesting to write about... graceless struggling into the unknown.
You have many interesting points and ideas...thought of starting your own blog?
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