Living Your Authentic Life

I was watching a documentary last night on being gay and religious, and the struggle to be accepted as both…or to deny one’s true self to be accepted.  I am by no means a religious scholar nor am I interested in debating theology, particularly with this platform.  What caught me was the subject of living life as your authentic self.  There was one young man on the program who had lived a gay lifestyle and was now working to not be gay.  In the beginning of the program he had this light in his eyes.  He was an artist and made interesting pieces of art out of almost anything.  Fast forward a couple of years and the art was gone….as well as the light in his eyes as he continued to work towards living a “normal” heterosexual life.  It broke my heart and made me angry.  The world just lost a beautiful spirit because…..why?

So what does living our authentic life mean?  To me, it means being true to ourselves and what we stand for.  To acknowledge our innate abilities, values, passions and our essential selves.  At some point in our lives, we all come up against the questions, who am I and what is my purpose? Why are these questions important?  Because living your authentic life gives you happiness, freedom, peace, love, purpose, meaning…

For most of us, to figure out what truly makes us happy in life does not include having to think about how society will accept us and the possibility of facing a certain amount of discrimination.  It breaks my heart that people I love may be hurt just for simply being who they were meant to be.

So is it worth it for all of us to live life as our authentic selves?  That is for each of us to decide.   However, I do ask, at the end of your life, how do you want to look back on your life and the choices you made?