Claire has an excellent new post titled “The Authentic Life,” which starts…
My friend Jordan longs to lead an Authentic Life. In caps.
He’s done fascinating things while also doing well for himself. Most people would say he’s living the good life. But he’s wanted to escape it for years. He and his wife tried once. They aimed for their idea of paradise. Failed. Not really through their own fault. But they ended up being sucked straight back into the “good” life again. Now they’re considering another try.
“The Authentic Life,” he muttered with a mock-weary sigh. “Of all the silly things to worry about.”
Really, at first my impulse was to mock. “The Authentic Life” – what does that even mean? As opposed to what? Fake life? Life is life, you either have some or you don’t, and if you don’t you’re dead and beyond such worries. I dunno, maybe a zombie or a vampire can have a fake life, but I can’t. Life is authentic by its very nature, it’s hard to fake. So is oxygen. Life can be fulfilling or maddening, comfortable or uncomfortable, happy or unhappy. But how can it be inauthentic?
Yeah, I know. I get pedantic, even when I’m talking to myself.
I should learn to shut up when I’m thinking like that. Even when I’m talking to myself. Claire makes the very good point that “The Authentic Life” would surely mean something different to whoever seeks it – self-evidently true. I barely remember, these days, why I did what I did that landed me out here on a wing and a prayer, but surely it wasn’t anything so hipsterish as a quest for “Authenticity.” And then something – possibly my conscience, or sense of decorum – tapped me on the shoulder and murmured, “Hey, Joel? Look up the word ‘infantilizing.’ On your own stupid blog.” And sure enough, there really was a time when I asked the same question – and when changing my life helped me find my own answer.
(Ed Note says: This is a clip from the probably-destined-never-to-be-published book You Never Completely Lose, written about four years ago.)
All sorts of wonderful things were at my disposal. Housing that was proof against any conceivable weather. Unlimited electricity, heat, and running water. Cheeseburgers. Victoria’s Secret catalogs. But I didn’t produce any of those things. I wouldn’t have begun to know how. I ate meat, but knew nothing about raising livestock. I ate vegetables, but didn’t know how to garden.
It struck me quite often that there was something dangerously infantilizing about that. I was completely at the mercy of the people who worked the power plant, or the water treatment plant, or the guys who drove the trucks that stocked the grocery store. I remember mentioning it to people I knew at work, once in a while. They tended to sidle away from me a bit nervously when I talked like that, as if not only had such thoughts never occurred to them, but it wasn’t quite right that they had occurred to me.
I’ve learned since then. I’ve gotten a lot deeper into the nuts and bolts of very basic living than I ever really intended. And here’s a bit of a paradox for you: I’m now physically vulnerable to being harmed by things that in suburbia wouldn’t have been more than a bother, but I’m also more in control of my own life than I have ever been at any previous time.
“Authenticity” isn’t what drove me out to the wilderness, where I happily washed up in the place Claire long ago dubbed The Desert Hermitage. This was the ‘Hard and holy place whose very name is never spoken,’ about which I once wrote a very bad poem before I’d ever even heard of it, let alone seen it. This place would be almost anybody else’s idea of hell, but it’s my Avalon. And I would pay any price to live here. Even become “authentic.”
My wifi reception has been very wonky for the past couple of days, and it’s showing signs of not wanting to let me post this – plus this is already too long. So I’m going to go ahead and post while/if I can, then get dressed and get to the day’s work. Maybe I’ll have more to say later, especially after reading Claire’s next installment.
OK, I read Claire’s Part One, and your interesting poem, and the thoughts presented right here. Heady stuff, that.
It has been commented that the first step to achieving the “Authentic Life” is to know oneself. From one viewpoint, I’d say that would perhaps be a good launching pad for the AL . . . to perhaps have the goals all mapped out so a PLAN can be formatted.
But another though crossed my feeble mind: perhaps the ultimate goal in attaining the AL is to at long last know oneself? Chicken . . . egg? Something else to ponder.
Sorry to break it to you pal,but you definitely know what an Authentic Life is,you’re living it. It may be different for different people,but there is absolutely such a thing as an Authentic Life. Everybody just has to figure out what that would mean for themselves.
Authentic Life. Hummmm…I tried reading the George Potter Joel posted, who likely had an Authentic Life, and didn’t understand any of it, have no understanding of what any of it was about or for or why he wrote it.
And I had to look up and think about the transitive verb infantilizing, which I’d never used or heard of.