Authenticity

Too many people lead fake lives and hence the world is a sad place. Our pursuits are fake, borrowed from others. We hanker after wealth because everybody seems to do just that. It can be power or glamour or something similar that catches our fancy. We dedicate our entire life to the pursuit of fanciful goals. Even our religion is a fancy item.

If wealth could give us happiness, the wealthiest people on the earth would be the happiest too. You can replace wealth with power or glamour or any such thing and the statement will remain valid with the necessary modifications.

The classical Russian writer, Leo Tolstoy, dramatized the futility of our common pursuits in the story of Ivan Ilyich. Ivan led a very inauthentic life. His pursuits were superficial.

Ivan is a successful person by worldly standards. He has money and influence. He is the pride of his family. What he has done all his life is to follow the example of the successful people. He imitated their manners and accepted their views as his own. He became a magistrate and then a prosecutor. He aspired to be the presiding judge but did not get that position. But he got a coveted position in the ministry with a high salary.

Ivan lives a luxurious life. He has money. He shows off his affluence too with “damasks, ebony, flowers, carpets and bronzes.” Exactly like the other affluent people. All the affluent people have similar lifestyles, views and creeds. Affluence is a kind of religion with its own rites and rituals. The problem with that religion, however, is that it does not touch the heart. It remains at the most superficial levels of human activities. Hence it can never bring deep contentment. It can never give anyone any sense of personal fulfilment.

Consequently, it tends to make people disgruntled. People begin to feel the pinch of inner hollowness sooner or later. Ivan too is haunted by that hollowness. There is no love in his heart for anyone. He is estranged from his own wife and daughter. Unhappiness leads to a fatal illness. When he is dying, his wife feels happy. She thinks she will be saved from his self-aggrandizing ways. But then she realises with horror that the family will be deprived of the huge salary he has been bringing in. Even his death cannot save her, she realises with a pang. Even that pang is superficial. She is yet another of the millions of superficial people on the earth.

Gerasim, on the other hand, is a genuinely happy person because he lives an authentic life. He is Ivan’s nurse. Character-wise, he is everything that Ivan is not. He is compassionate. Empathy motivates his actions. He makes meaningful bonds with fellow humans around him. He has no issues with putting Ivan’s legs on his shoulders in order to reduce the dying man’s pain. Gerasim is a man who follows his heart.

Following your heart is the most fundamental key to authentic existence. Most human pursuits take people away from their own hearts. Even their religions do nowadays.

Have you ever tried to listen to your heart? Have you ever sat on the bank of a river or on the sands of a beach all alone looking into the core of your own heart? A rock on a mountain or a tree in your backyard may perform the same miracle, if you care.

Gerasim, in Tolstoy’s story, is not a rich man. But he is a happy man. Contentment belongs to your own heart. It’s only a matter of discovering it there. That discovery, however, requires authenticity. Authenticity is the most fundamental condition for happiness.

PS. This post is the beginning of my #BlogchatterA2Z 2023