A surprising fact: you cannot force your authenticity into existence.
Any effort to do so will end in failure or nonsense. The more impatience and persistence you apply, the more artificial and false the result becomes.
Authenticity reveals itself. In its own time. And in its own way.
The mind protests: “Yes, but you can’t just sit around and wait, can you? Life will pass by, and nothing worthwhile will ever emerge.”
No one is talking about passivity. On the contrary, what’s needed is proactivity.
The task is to create favorable conditions, much like a gardener does for a tree.
He does not force the plant’s cells to divide, break through the soil, and reach upward. The tree grows on its own, while the person either helps or hinders it.
Within this metaphor, the fertilized soil is your past self, the tree is your future self, and the gardener is your present self.
The value of everything you’ve experienced up to this point becomes immediately clear. No matter how dark it may have been, the soil will digest it and turn it into something useful.
After all, there’s a reason black soil is considered the most fertile.
And if it happens to be a rare exotic tree, you have no way of knowing its life cycle. All that remains is to do the obvious things, like protecting and watering it, and wait to see how it surprises you.
There’s no way to predict what will emerge in the end: a giant baobab, an orchidarium, or a grove of cypresses. But that unpredictability is precisely what makes it beautiful, because it is a creative experiment.
If everything is done right, your future self grows before your very eyes.
Sincerely yours,
-Alexander
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