Modern Western society is obsessed with individuality. The desire to be different is a normal human trait, and every one of us possesses it to some extent. However, it can become an issue when this becomes a central driving force for every action you take and is not based on real internal motivations but rather on a response to the external world.
It is unarguable that each person has unique characteristics that make them who they are, but we also share a lot in common in the way our psyche works, same goes for fundamental layers of movement. I have noticed that view of being authentic is often used interchangeably with being different. Even though these two notions have significant overlap, they are not exactly the same thing.
Psychologists Brian Goldman and Michael Kernis developed an Authenticity inventory that consists of 4 key factors:
1. Self-awareness: Knowledge of and trust in one's own motives, emotions, preferences, and abilities.
2. Unbiased processing: Clarity in evaluating your strengths and your weaknesses without denial or blame.
3. Behavior: Acting in ways congruent with your own values and needs, even at the risk of criticism or rejection.
4. Relational orientation: Close relationships which inherently require openness and honesty.
Being authentic involves the ability to be introspective, without which you cannot address any of the 4 points mentioned above. It also involves the strength to be able to admit your faults and when it is needed, to stand behind your values, even when it puts you at odds with your peers. Because sometimes you will diverge from other people and their opinions in a fundamental way, and sometimes it will be so significant that you will have to put clear boundaries between yourself and other people. But striving for being “different” just for the sake of it is not the same thing. It is a superficial appearance rather than something essential in nature. Authenticity means you are responding to internal expectations rather than external ones, so whether you fit into the outside world or not is not the main motivation, but a consequence of conscious decision-making. In the age of individualism, when only the “exceptional” is projected into the public eye, the incentive to differ often doesn’t come from deep conviction, but from the simple desire to oppose oneself to the external world, to be the “one of a kind”, without actually putting any effort into it. The thing that seems to not be taken into consideration here is that if everyone is exceptional then nobody really is.
Do not get me wrong, I personally truly believe that every single person has potential in them that waits to be developed and every person has the ability to become creative. But if there is no capacity to introspect, you cannot be in touch with what drives you, so it is substituted by something else. So creativity in itself becomes the goal, replacing the desire to solve problems and add value to the world through it. People are quick to put their names on things that are just awkward remakes of something else and are not trying to contribute something of worth by studying and understanding a subject in depth.
In relationship to movement, this manifests in mannerisms. Everybody wants to do “their own thing”, be “different”, and express a unique style, so everything becomes contaminated with the habits that you are not in control of. It causes the loss of essence, leaving just an empty shell of whatever you are trying to pursue. People seem to forget that we all (most of us) have two legs and two arms, so there is barely ever something truly new under the sun. Putting glitter on a car doesn’t make it a new car, it makes it the same old car, but now covered in shiny dust that gets into every filter and is very hard to get rid of. This means that there is no possibility for any further learning to happen, no possibility to build something truly novel – it is just old habits in a new cover. When your movement and behaviors are guided by habitual patterns it means that you are not in control of it. You have a single mode of action. This means you have no freedom of choice, and everything you do is automated.
What we are trying to achieve by the practice we propose is to bring this chronic lack of choice to the awareness of people. Recognizing your automaticity is the first step to actually moving toward your authentic self. Our mannerisms are built in by the environment we live in and our subconscious reactions to it, very often we drag behaviors from early childhood. These habits block the development of the individual and prevent maturity. In order to change that, the practice you do should help you strip everything to the bottom and get rid of the senseless glitter, just staying with the essence of movement and developing the capacity to differentiate subtle layers of it. This process will take years to unfold and to really reeducate the system in such a way that it stops being automatic. After you go through this transformation, you start having a choice when you perform an action. Only then it makes sense to start digging into your authenticity and start looking for a unique, uncontaminated style of yours that will come from the essence and not from the desire to impress someone else. This will result in the capacity to build something new. Unfortunately, because it is a long and effortful process, not many are willing to engage with it. Our culture tries to convince us that there is an easy path, a quick solution and that everyone deserves greatness just for the merit of being born. This fake promise, seemingly “democratizing” everything, actually robs people of the possibility of truly evolving.
Obsession with being different and being creative for the sake of creativity is an interesting peculiarity of the world we live in today. It is a noble pursuit to want to find who you truly are, at the end of the day aren’t all of us ask this question, but it seems to me that there is a lot of confusion between denominating your individuality by superficial mannerisms and finding what your real motivations are and acting according to that. Authenticity and fakery can often be confused by the outside observer, but there is a huge difference between the two: the former is regulating the inner and outer environment while the latter is outer-oriented and inevitably creates a strong internal conflict. If you are willing to engage in the process that will strip you of all the habits and reveal to you the true essence of yourself, it can be painful, but it is also extremely rewarding. It will expose the parts of you that are hidden behind the automatized patterns, and often these parts are not something pretty to look at. However, if your weakness is exposed and you are aware of it, there is a chance to do something about it, thus making a huge step toward taking control of your life. Movement practice should offer a structure that helps an individual to go through this process and contribute to the ongoing search for authenticity, true creativity, and self-expression, as opposed to creating superficial and mechanistic habits that will hinder your development as an individual.