AUTHENTICITY

“What you see is a compensation for what you don’t see.” (James Hollis)

I’m beginning to think composting in Hawaïi was a very bad idea. The truth is, Hawaïi is an island that, in some ways, cannot deliver the kind of services mainland cities offer would-be recyclers and composters. For a tree-hugger from British Columbia who’s used to reducing, re-using and recycling every kind of paper, plastic, bottle, box and even every styrofoam chip that comes across my figurative plate, (and the food scraps that come across my literal plate), it’s frustrating to see the heaps of garbage that two of us can generate on the Big Island on a regular basis. Generally speaking, I try to “clean up my own back yard” and reduce my personal environmental footprint versus blaming whatever powers-that-be that aren’t serving my particular needs. So I won’t go into a rant about how on Hawaïi Island we can only recycle a modicum of the above-mentioned “stuff” — some of which, as you know from my last blog post, is compost that has nowhere to go. But I will go into the recent setbacks that caused a mini-rant-fest, and saw me ready to abort mission on composting, and by association, blogging.

The reality is, not only have I almost irredeemably skewed the contents of my new tumbler-composter with stuff that needs a much bigger facility and different variety/combo of materials to “succeed”, but it’s messy, smelly, and buggy. Much the same can be said, metaphorically speaking, of any new plot I hatch, any new scheme I conceive — such as my ambitious plan to post a new blog on every Monday of 2021. (It sounded like a good idea at the time…) But I hadn’t factored in the steep-for-me technological learning curve involved in blogging. After a particularly frustrating “training session” with a long-suffering son, I briefly considered that my blogging, and my composting, days were done.

As fate would have it, I was simultaneously reading Hollis’s “Living an Examined Life” (highly recommend it), and his words reassured me that such is indeed the nature of the beast when one is trying to live authentically, to live out what he describes as one’s unique “soul calling”. Hollis writes: “To step into our lives, to come back to the task of becoming who we really are when not defined by roles, categories, or the expectations of others is a most daunting summons”. Progress can seem glacially slow. Results impossibly far off. But whatever image I hope to create or sustain as a blogger-philosopher, it cannot be, “a compensation for what you don’t see.” (Nor, might I suggest, is that any kind of life strategy for anybody.)

By “what you don’t see”, Hollis is referring to the invisible mechanisms that run our lives. As composting is a metaphor for dealing with my inner resistance to this “transformational process”, so too the things upon which we pin the blame for why we haven’t changed, why we haven’t lost that weight, kept that journal, learned how to meditate, are not the causes of our malaise. The root causes of our hesitations and procrastinations are deeply embedded in old conditioning, unconscious survival mechanisms and archaic beliefs. And the root FEAR that keeps us stuck in that inertia is the fear of coming face to face with our own inauthenticity. Our lack of self-actualization, as Abraham Maslow would call it. Fear of realizing that we have lived what Hollis calls “a trivialized life, a distracted life, an anesthetized life”. All for the sake of not suffering, too much, the discomfort of truly growing up. Of showing up to the world as we truly are. To honor our own interests, talents and innner promptings, whether recognized or not, is, according to Hollis, our soul’s calling.

So what you read today is not a compensation for what you don’t see, but is actually a behind-the-scenes glimpse of my own struggles with authenticity. With stepping out of my comfort zone to try new things like composting and, if not mastering, then at least attempting the steep learning curve that blogging is for me. In the spirit of resisting that which resists in me, this, my first two-digit blog post will not be my last! As long as I’m not trying to be something or somebody I’m not, the blog can and must go on. If only in answer to my own soul’s calling.

What might be calling to you? And do you dare to answer?

P.S. I’m also about to take up playing the ukulele. Stay tuned…