Loss of Authenticity

When you walk in an accurate estimation of yourself, when you commit noble deeds for the right reasons, and display correct priorities to those around you, little prepares you for the unassuming force of derailment building itself up before you.

It begins with newly forged allies and friends- those who correctly identified the sacred within you.

They pronounce with precision the goodness of your actions, the strength of your character, the words you speak that are imbued with truth.

Some follow you, others want to become like you. Still others wish to support you, and aid you in your every endeavor, so certain are they of how important you truly are.

And if you give yourself to them, you lose.

The moment your newly found network becomes your emotional safety net, you find out that that which once gave you a feeling of permanence, is suddenly being siphoned off. It happens gradually at first, and maybe it is not such a seemingly bad deal: you get support, adoration, following, and a sense of certainty culminating into euphoria. Those things are justifiable additions to our lives – so we tell ourselves. If people are praising you for the right things, are they not somewhat good too? Do evil people also praise such things?

Some may care about you genuinely, and can be trusted, but most do not possess the humility, sophistication, or maturity to differentiate between righteousness and social preference. It was your function and position those people care for. It mattered not what you had been through, what you have conquered, or how you have served them – it only matters that you do what they have existing admiration for: the things that make them feel how they want to feel.

And if you do a righteous deed that betrays that function, you instantaneously become an affront to them, and while you are pulled into a social courtroom of public opinion, your safety net is suddenly cut, and your once care-free balancing act now one of survival. Your allies now indifferent, the adoration now disdain.

Your weight in deed and speech are gone. You now are at war with the affections you had for their praise. You discover you had changed, and your confidence somehow robbed of you, since it was steadily being placed in the hands of the public and not the One who taught you to be great – to whatever degree that you were.

And when it seems only rubble remains, and the “high” now over, an enduring choice must be made: do you appease the people to get your social standing back, or do you take upon yourself the quest of rediscovering what made you significant to begin with? Will you dismantle the frivolous one inside of you that adored public praise, and return to the real you, or will you be invaded by the expectations of others, play a reliable social game, and lose yourself in the same moment society convinces you as truth a false sense of self?

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