After watching the video "Narrative and Authenticity 11-16-09", I think this is really an inspiring talk or truth about how we are living in the reality.
One of the speaker said that about 80 years ago, there was someone said that "The most important project of becoming human is driving to be authentic". Which is about "What is mean to be real?/What is mean to be not false?"
Right, this is the question that we should really ask ourselves. “Who am I?” “Am I really being the real me?” Maybe just like the speaker said that we are making lots of choices to become who I want to be.
While another speaker brought out the question that “Why is it so difficult to be authentic in today’s society?” And she claimed that maybe we can through exploring how we can use narrative to find out our authentic self. I guess what she meant was that there are lots of problems or attractions make us get lost in today’s society. But through telling our stories to other people, we may find out the “real me”.
The fourth speaker told us about some experience with the homeless people sharing their own stories to others. He found that you could find that story telling is in powering or not in powering. And you can learn from people how they tell their stories. Which is do they framed themselves? Are they the one always battling? Are they the victims? Are there any other people in their stories? Or is it just all about them?
Just think about these questions, we can understand more about how people think they really are. The speaker also said that to understand who we are, we need to have a sense of who we are with/ where we are/ how we got here and where we are heading.
Therefore the speaker was convinced that stories are very powerful and telling how your story can be very in powering or not in powering which depends on what character you play in reality or what plot you put.
Another speaker told us about the leadership studies. She claimed that story tell by leaders could be very legal centric as they always said something that what they think others want to hear. This showed about the whole human system is about complex relationships. I really agree that authentic leaders know about human, so they speak powerfully and could create positive energy.
Though, authentic leaders may not actually know who they really are or what their true selves are. And that is why “authenticity” is a goal that we really want to strive for.
These made me think of are we really true to ourselves every time or everyday? Or we are just escaping from reality? Maybe we can just try to tell people our own story and this may reflect ourselves in another way and learn to be the true self. If we succeed to find or to be the true self in today’s society, this would be really meaningful to us.
