value and authenticity

I am part of the world. I have values. And I act on them. I have a say, however small, in the way the world becomes.

The human orientation in the world is necessarily prescriptive. People value and want to navigate the world in a manner consistent with their valuations. But some people act as if they have no values of their own. They recite the values and expectations of others and play along. They say "Society expects x...men are not allowed to do y...z is the way the world is." What is truly weak is to ignore, discount, or give up on one's own valuations and the power to evaluate.

I would like more people to embrace their religion; not the religion they belong to. The religion of life, instead, that comes from being them. ~Jayson

I don't care what religion you belong to, I care about your spirituality. I care about your personal orientation toward life, existence, and meaning itself. Your religion doesn't tell me that, nor should it. If you discount your own personal experience and pass over in silence allowing the words and experiences of others to displace your own, you may as well be committing suicide. Spiritual suicide.

Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation. ~Oscar Wilde

Acceptance of the way things are to the exclusion of one's values -- displacement of self with affected identity -- is impotency. It is to become like a facsimile, a forwarding address, a soulless pantomime.