Authentic Self

Authentic Self

When I originally started thinking about this post I made the mistake of assuming it was going to be a lot easier than it is turning out to be. There I go, breaking one of the agreements from the personal contract! Lesson learned. This is in fact, an incredibly thought provoking post which seems to open the flood gates in front of a considerable amount of emotion. If done correctly there seems to be an astonishing amount of risk involved, a level of vulnerability which I think most people rarely even consider approaching, let alone blogging about for all the world to see. So here I go, diving head first into it.

Personally, I find it extremely difficult to define the authentic self. By placing this label on it, I feel as if we have been asked to identify the very most singular definition we have of our self. This seems rather limiting to me. I can’t honestly say that I believe I have one single definable authentic self. I feel that we are ever evolving, changing from situation to situation, person to person, moment to moment, and experience to experience. I do believe we all have a core set of values; somewhat of a set of guidelines by which we live our lives and do our best to adhere to in day to day situations. I also believe that we cannot adhere to these guidelines every single moment of our lives. What we would like to be our authentic self, and what we do to live up to these expectations each and every moment can be extremely different things. Actions speak louder than words as it were.

Further, I submit that these core principals, or guidelines which we try to live by are not entirely our own. That is half the reason it becomes so easy to stray from them from time to time. They can never truly be our own so long as we reside in a civilized society and adhere to social norms and the practices of those around us. Our idea of “right and wrong,” “good and bad,” and all of our “should and should not’s,” have been ingrained in us by our parents and teachers and those we have been raised by all of our lives. Our idea of God and Heaven and Satan and Hell is generally defined by the religion we have been raised to subscribe to. Few of our core concepts of self, have in fact been developed, by ourselves.

Take for example, myself. From the moment I was born to the moment I first set foot in a combat zone I had a pretty solid idea of what was right and wrong. I like to think that I probably had a pretty good idea of who my authentic self was, a fairly authentic American kid. I was, for the most part, a happy go lucky guy. I didn’t necessarily subscribe to a religion but had at least a basic faith in God. I was non-violent, I was fairly people pleasing, and for the most part, did what was considered the “right thing” on a daily basis. Most of what I did was based on what I had been taught to do and came from a “happy” place within myself. For all intents and purposes, at this point in my life I believe my authentic self was just who I mentioned earlier, and American kid. Did I have me completely figured out back then? No, but isn’t that part of who I was, and therefor part of my authentic self? I think so.

Then this whole big thing came to the forefront of America’s attention, the War on Terror. I was at basic training when the towers were hit. My Drill Sergeants were right on the money when they told us every single one of us would play a role in the upcoming, and inevitable war. A few years later their predictions proved right. I was in a combat zone. Suddenly my “authentic self” became a whole new person. That happy go lucky American kid version of me, I left him on the scorching sands of a desert half a world away. Never to be brought home, never to grow up, never to fall in love, never to fall out of love. The pre-war version of “me” lay dead, eviscerated by the actions one must adopt to survive the rigors of combat.

Do the right thing, do unto others, love thy fellow man, do no harm, don’t kill, have faith in God. These tenants which I held dear for so much of my life, tossed out the window, replaced by a new set of “guidelines” necessary for survival. OK, so I still held onto some of them, in a manner of speaking. Do the right thing became never let your guard down, never let your buddies down. Do unto others? Ha, well at least I wasn’t going to use a dull meat cleaver to hack off the head of my enemy and have it displayed worldwide through international media outlets. Love thy fellow man? That’s not how it works in a kill or be killed situation. Don’t hurt or kill? Then get hurt or get killed. Love and happiness are the last things a human being feels when they find themselves in a situation where lives they care about are at stake and they must defend them. God? I won't dwell on that, but let's say he became a fickle subject at best.

For six years these new tenants were my authentic self. When I was not at war I was training for war or training others for war. At times I was burying those brothers of mine who had fallen to the hand of war. Everything I did and every act I committed solidified these tenants. So long as there was a war on, I knew what I had to do to survive it, and knew how to train others to survive it. My “authentic self” became a survivor, and time and time again I tested and solidified my new identity and existence.

Once the wars were over, I once again developed a new “self-concept,” this one was of confliction. An internal struggle began between who I wanted to be, who I thought I had become, and who I was and they were ever at odds with one another. My new authentic self was an incredibly depressed, broken, crazy war Veteran. Even though I was not necessarily aware of the fact that the old “me” had died, I was aware that there was little to no place for the new me back in the civilized world. It nearly tore me apart, it drove me mad, and practically consumed my life. You could say at this point my authentic self was unclear even.

Now here I am, three years separated from the Military and three and a half years separated from the last time my feet were squarely planted in a combat zone. I’m still very much so in the infant stages of learning to cope with the conflict that raged inside me for years. I will not say that I am well on my path to recovery, I feel that would imply there is a final solution to coming to terms with the four little letters that plague so many of our American men and women. Truth be told, I don’t think Post Traumatic Stress is something an individual can be “cured” of. I do however, strongly believe that it can be managed, dealt with, and for the most part kept in check. My newest, and most recent “authentic self” adheres to a whole new set of tenants which I believe best define me. Some are of from that kid who never came back from the sandbox, some are from that kid who did, and some are from the person I am today.

In closing, I reaffirm my earlier theory, that our “authentic self” is an ever changing, ever evolving, entity. For me to find, and stay in touch with mine I have found that honesty is paramount. I have to first be honest with myself about who I am, who I want to be, and who I was. I have to accept that this life of mine is mine, no one else’s. To thine own self be true. Finally, I share with you something I wrote for a Facebook post months ago:

What I do or don't do each day defines me; not what I have done, those things are in the past and I cannot change them, all I can do is learn from them. What I want to do and will do doesn't yet define me, it hasn't happened yet. On the day I wake up and accomplish those goals, that's the day they will become what I am doing, and that's the day they will define me.