The genuine article
- June 7th, 2011
“There will be an agreement in whatever variety of actions, so they be each honest and natural in their hour.” – Emerson
How do you feel when you’re around confident people?
When folks are authentically themselves, without pretense or veneer, I’m not sure I could be more drawn in. Proximity to “the real” is like being close to a fountain of life. It invites me to be more truly myself.
From a distance however, I can be deceived into thinking I’m experiencing the real when I’m not. Kind of like seeing someone on television and then bumping into them in person. There’s a qualitative difference when I see them in the flesh and not through the screen.
It’s not that what I’m experience is bad or good. I’m making a quality of experience observation here and not a moral assessment.
It’s just not accurate to think that the proxy is the same thing as the real. What I’m experiencing is more of an appearance or replica than the actual.
Kind of reminds me of Rene Magritte’s famous painting of a pipe.
He was making the metaphysical distinction that a representation of a pipe is not the same thing as an actual pipe. Not only is the observation clever, it is resourceful.
As I got to thinking about that painting, I was reminded of the “representations” I make up in my head about the cool things other people create – pictures, businesses, presentations, words on paper. Even the best versions in my mind of what I think they are creating is not the same as the experience they enjoy when they actually create the thing.
Turns out the only way to experience that first hand is to create it on my own.
Seems to me it has to be more satisfying to experience the real act of creating first hand than to try and get a proxy experience of what I see others create, even if my admiration for their creation is greater than my own.
Turns out that the only road to discover a vision that is authentically mine – that is aligned with what I am made to deliver – is to get on the road I’m made to travel and make it so.
June 7th, 2011 at 10:36 pm
Awesome post Dane! I couldn’t agree with you more. We can only be real if we know who we are, otherwise we’ll be trying to be like those around us.
June 8th, 2011 at 4:43 pm
Your thoughts bring a number of things to mind. In younger years, I worked around and with a lot of musicians and artists. Many I looked up to and admired. It never occurred to me that they’d be anything but what I’d imagined them to be. What I wanted to be. Until I met them and learned early on things aren’t always what they seem. But your thoughts go deeper and thanks to you and the timing of FastTrack, I feel what you mean. You have a good way of presenting ideas that allow one to transition, if open and ready. So yes, I get exactly what you are talking about on many levels. As always, you make me think a little deeper!
October 12th, 2011 at 3:20 pm
[...] When people at the supermarket walk past the cheaply-priced mass-market stuff and head for the expen…as Organic or Natural or Green aren't really that trustworthy? There's a word they use for it in the biz – they call it a greenwashing. And that's a term that probably needs no explaining.There is practically no green product out there that's completely free of wrongdoing; but when compared with one another, the car companies and the oil, gas and electricity companies are just about the sneakiest in their green labeling. It happens in any recession. Businesses are desperate to do something about the low sales they experience; if they are lucky enough to find a bandwagon to jump on, they're only too happy to. This time around, they've found solace in the attraction green products have in the marketplace. Where else would they find an idea at this time for a way to make customers pay 25% more?The FTC has had some pretty strict laws in place for ages for what products companies are allowed to jump up and scream "green" about. It is just that the FTC has been shorthanded for quite a while and haven't really get their eye on the ball as far as enforcement is been concerned. Right about now though, they're beginning to catch up. Not only will they now be enforcing what laws they have, they are going to establish new definitions for what kind of green products get to call themselves Carbon Neutral or Sustainable.Those rules when they come out aren't exactly going to save the world; but they'll be better than what we have right now. Until then, here's what you need to know to take green products that will really save the earth for the extra cash you put down for them.Say that you are looking for paper plates that are made of recycled material. You see a package that says it's made from recycled material. That is a very good thing; only, it can't be as good as the package next over that says something to the effect that it is Postconsumer Recycled, all of it. The FTC will make sure that no one can just say "recycled" anymore. What about advertising slogans such as non-toxic or cruelty free though? You can be pretty sure that when there is no standard definition for these terms, they don't mean to the manufacturers what they mean to you.In the end, the best green products out there aren't green in any traditional sense of the term. Wal-Mart for instance has told its suppliers that it will only stock super-concentrated liquid soap. This will make sure that the less weight has to be packed in bottles and transported all across the country. This saves in using fewer plastic bottles manufactured, and less weight transported. And who would you believe it – that this would save the earth a lot more than any nice "organically manufactured" environmentally friendly green soap would. And this isn't something that they could put on the bottle. [...]