This is one of the best passages I've seen about being authentic and being your true-self I have seen in a very long, long time. Credits to the Personal Discovery Course that helped bring it to my attention. Thanks. Here it is:
"We arrive in this world with birthright gifts - then we spend the first half of our lives abandoning them or letting others disabuse us of them. As young people, we are surrounded by expectations that may have little to do with who we really are, expectations held by people who are not trying to discern our selfhood but to fit us into slots. In families, schools, workplaces, and religious communities, we are trained away from true self toward images of acceptability; under social pressures like racism and sexism [and consumerism] our original shape is deformed beyond recognition; and we ourselves, driven by fear, too often betray true self to gain the approval of others. ...
Our deepest calling is to grow into our own authentic selfhood, whether or not it conforms to some image of who we ought to be. As we do so, we will not only find the joy that every human being seeks - we will also find our path of authentic service in the world. True vocation joins self and service, as Frederick Buechner asserts when he defines vocation as "the place where your deep gladness meets the world's deep need."
--Parker Palmer
...wow.
