Sarah

“When you're twenty-one, life is a roadmap. It's only when you get to twenty-five or so that you begin to suspect you've been looking at the map upside down, and not until you're forty are you entirely sure. By the time you're sixty, take it from me, you're fucking lost.”
― Stephen King, Joyland

“I'm disappointed in myself. In my life. All my life, everything I tried, I only got halfway there. You try to take advantage of the time you have. That's what they tell you to do. But when you're old, you look back and you see all you did, with all that time, is waste it. All you have is a story of things you never started or couldn't finish. Things you fought with all your heart to build that didn't last or fought with all your heart to get rid of and they're all still around. I'm ashamed of myself.”
― Michael Chabon, Moonglow

“Don't let the expectations and opinions of other people affect your decisions. It's your life, not theirs. Do what matters most to you; do what makes you feel alive and happy. Don't let the expectations and ideas of others limit who you are. If you let others tell you who you are, you are living their reality — not yours. There is more to life than pleasing people. There is much more to life than following others' prescribed path. There is so much more to life than what you experience right now. You need to decide who you are for yourself. Become a whole being. Adventure.”
― Roy T. Bennett

“The biggest mistake people make when trying to be authentic is just that: they try. They see these role models of what an "authentic" person is supposed to look like or act like, and they try to emulate that.

Authenticity isn't about what things appear to be. It's about allowing things to be what they are. Authenticity is about getting away from hiding, from wearing a mask, from always asking, "How should I act? What should I say? What will people think?" That includes asking, "How should an authentic person act? What would a genuine person say?"

Being authentic isn't about making yourself a certain way. It's not even about finding out what you "really" enjoy as opposed to what other people enjoy, or who you "really" are as opposed to who other people are. Authenticity is allowing your likes, dislikes, personality, appearance, hobbies, and beliefs to be fluid, to change, to evolve as you learn, grow, and experience the world.

At its core, authenticity is the practice of surrendering the tiresome task of keeping up appearances and taking up of the lifetime work of allowing what is already within you to come out while you remove as many internal and external obstacles as possible.

And who knows what will spill out of you if you just allow it to? Who knows what is within you awaiting recognition, awaiting permission to show itself to the world? Even you don’t know—until you try. Or, rather, until you stop trying. Until you become curious.”
― Vironika Tugaleva