Forgotten Words

Each morning, I get my Medium.com digest email and immediately look for the latest musings of Ayodeji Awosika. I try not to miss a day reading what he writes. The words of Michael Thompson also resonate regularly. The way John P. Weiss weaves visual art with the written word is, well, poetic.

There are many authors — creators — on Medium that I love to read. To me, they seem like people who have found their authentic voice.

It’s an interesting word: authentic. It’s thrown around a lot these days. I’m not entirely sure most people who use it really know what it means, much less how to attain to actual authenticity.

I don’t.

Authenticity is an existential pursuit. To be authentic, you really have to know who you are. But it’s difficult to know who you are when the voices of so many sycophantic charlatans and their hidden agendas rage in our minds on a 24-hour cycle. If you want an audience, you may tailor your voice to the desires of your followers. If you do that, is it really your voice?

Like I said. Existential.

Humans are complex and complicated. We’re a product of our experiences, our thoughts and what we choose to internalize, and our thoughts about our thoughts.

Being honest with yourself is a critical component of authenticity. In the same vein, how many of us really know how to be honest with ourselves? Which thoughts about ourselves are our own and which ones have been essentially pushed into our minds?

There’s not much of a leap from that line of questioning to realize that becoming authentic is always unfinished business for two reasons:

We’re always changing, and
Because we’re always changing, being authentic is always in a state of evolution.

So, while some people get very close to authenticity, nobody ever arrives.

The pursuit of authenticity is worth the journey even though the road is strewn with pitfalls of discouragement and imposter syndrome. But, as Steward Stafford said, “withheld honesty results in forgotten words.”

Forgotten words.

Whether you have a large audience or write only for yourself actually doesn’t matter. What does matter is identifying true principles that resonate and then working toward living according to those principles.

Easier said than done.

But, why writing?

Writing, particularly when done with pen and paper, forces me to slow down a little. Writing gives me time to put down our writing utensil and focus my mind for a moment on what comes next. It also allows me to go back and remove the stuff that isn’t important to me or doesn’t make sense.

I suppose the same could be accomplished (though perhaps with more difficulty) with video or audio.

Writing is also one of the best ways to preserve my thoughts. It’s also how I record those resonating principles, and how I can keep them close so I don’t forget.

I write here because I do enjoy when people read what I write, but I do it for myself. I do it because I have a lot of thoughts bouncing around in my head, and maybe, just maybe, one of those thoughts will be useful to someone else. But if not, that’s okay.

It’s impossible to measure the impact my words may have on another person, but if I don’t share it’s guaranteed they won’t impact anyone, except perhaps myself.

So, I hope you’ll do yourself a favor and write down thoughts you deem important so they’re never forgotten.

Thanks for reading!