While in New York this weekend, I was reminded of how frequently we are faced with decisions that speak to our authenticity. It was more than the patterns of styles and behaviors that emerged while people-watching. It was what I saw in formal exhibits and on stage that spotlighted our human struggles and triumphs of being true to ourselves.

  Authenticity is that desired state that we connect with success, leadership and happiness.  And while it is so desired, there are ongoing pressures to be otherwise. Fitting in, being accepted, avoiding ridicule, controversy and conflict keep many teetering on the edge, rocking between a unique self and the collective blend. Some just succumb, believing it is easier to mix with the majority.

            Leave the streets of NYC, step into a theater or art museum, and find a celebration of the authentic. For originality and individual victories draw us in, and connect at a gut level.

            The fancy footwork of Billy Elliott, the young boy growing up in a struggling mining town, won him the opportunity to pursue ballet, but not without enduring some soul-searching pirouettes of his family and community. It’s an all too common theme in life.

            At Lincoln Center, South Pacific’s Emile de Becque made decisions according to his priorities, leaving him unpopular at times.  His love, Nellie, resisted her true feelings for him, listening to what others thought and said, for she was already tagged “nutty” for being herself.  This play, full of many such struggles, shows them to be more of a daily occurrence than we might want to acknowledge.

            We find differences and creativity recognized and appreciated in exhibits at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). While his work is revered now, Claude Monet made choices that were not so easy at the time.  He snubbed artistic traditions to make way for playing with personal expressions. Creations throughout MoMA reveal similar sentiments, with artists eliminating the concept of convention to toy with just about everything.

            When it came to interpreting space, within and surrounding structures, Frank Lloyd Wright was another artist who didn’t believe in sacrificing personal style. He wove form, function and light into revolutionary architecture, as is the case with the Guggenheim Museum. In observance of the museum’s 50^th anniversary, the world has been Contemplating the Void, which Wright so boldly designed into the center of this “catalytic” building.

            Standing in the spiraling open space, one can begin to understand Wright’s dedication to his own sense of being and imagination.  There was no conforming, no imitation.  And yet, with just one step outdoors, existence becomes a monotone blur defined by peer pressure. Even in our pursuit of being different, too often we are the same.

            Unless, like young Billy Elliott, you feel sparks inside, like electricity, and totally free, you are not being true to you. 

This entry was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2010 at 8:21 pm and is filed under Authenticity, Culture, Leadership, Originality, creativity.