Finding Authenticity and Contentment

Self; is that who I am?

Come sit down beside me

I said to myself

And although it doesn’t make sense

I held my own hand

As a small sign of trust

And together I sat on the fence

Michael Leunig - “Sitting on the fence”

What most of us want is pretty simple.  We want to love and be loved.

We want to like ourselves, rather than despise ourselves. 

We want to feel that we are running our own lives, and that those lives are more or less the way we want them to be. 

It doesn’t seem like too much to ask, and yet we know-from looking at our own lives and those of friends and neighbours- that we often cannot manage one part or even any part of this equation.

Many of us feel overwhelmed by the difficulty of life- is there someone out there that can save me from myself?

How we feel about our own self, how well or little we know our own self, whether we feel alive inside, largely determines the amount of time we spend alone, as well as the quality of relationships we have with other people. 

It could be that how you experience your own self, might determine whether you can get up from the park bench and walk away from someone who has hurt you; whether you can turn to your companion and say what you feel and want; whether you can take their hand and leave the park… or sit in comfortable deathly silence.

Somewhere on that long trail between childhood and adulthood many of us, perhaps most of us, lose touch with vital skills that allow us to know what we want and how to get it; which allow us to know what we are feeling and how to express it; which allow us to reach out to others with trust and confidence, and to be reached toward in much the same way.

Finding the answer to the question…. Exploring Who am I? is central to knowing someone and feeling known by someone else.

Stephanie Dorwick