Authenticity. It’s a big word and it’s everywhere today. We want an authentic life with authentic friends, even down to attending church with an authentic preacher. But sadly, we, myself included, are often guilty of measuring ourselves against the impossible: the manufactured image of perfection we hear, watch, and read about. These works of populist fiction become our target in real life.
I must congratulate my fellow marketers in succeeding selling us plastic perfection but derailing us in our pursuit of an authentic self.
But no matter how philosophical I get, I find myself going back to the old adage, “beauty is skin deep, but ugliness is to the bone.” So I try harder, run longer, hit the gym at 5 a.m. and pass up on the chocolate cake that beckons for me every time I walk into the kitchen. My insecurity demons emboldened by the latest picture of the shirtless, buff and Photoshopped (as in touched up, enhance, beautified by software) Brad Pitt, have their way with me as I try, still unsuccessfully, to measure up.
I want authenticity from people around me while I try to sell everyone on the Photoshopped version of myself. I sell it to those around me as “giving it” my best, but is that my real motivation?
Do you feel pressure to look, behave or become someone other than whom you believe God has created you to be?