The Authenticity Project

by Clare Pooley

Ring the bells that still can ring Forget your perfect offering There is a crack in everything That’s how the light gets in. LEONARD COHEN

Everyone lies about their lives. What would happen if you shared the truth instead? The one thing that defines you, that makes everything else about you fall into place? Not on the internet, but with those real people around you? Perhaps nothing. Or maybe telling that story would change your life, or the life of someone you’ve not yet met. That’s what I want to find out.

Julian wore his solitude and loneliness like old, ill-fitting shoes. He was used to them, in many ways they had grown comfortable, but over time they were bending him out of shape, causing calluses and bunions that would never go away.

writing it had been a comfort, like loosening the laces on those uncomfortable shoes, letting his feet breathe a bit more easily.

Emmeline Pankhurst didn’t chain herself to those railings so we could spend our lives as a tiny cog in someone else’s wheel. Be your own boss. Create something. Employ people. Be fearless. Do something you really love. Make it all worthwhile.

Tai chi meets hardness with softness, so incoming force exhausts itself. It is philosophy for life

Honesty is not always the best policy. Sometimes we have secrets for a reason – to protect the people we love.

She cried for what might have been, for the version of a perfect future that had, for a while, shimmered in front of her, that she had just started to believe might become a reality. She cried for her lost belief in herself; she’d considered herself so strong and clever but she’d turned out to be gullible and stupid. But most of all, she cried for the girl she’d thought she was becoming; one who was impulsive, spontaneous and fun-loving, who did things on a whim, without worrying about the consequences. The girl who wrote secrets in notebooks and scattered them to the wind. The girl who fell carelessly in love with handsome strangers. She was gone.

maybe, just for today, since it’s a special occasion, I could have a drink. Just one. Two, tops. After all, it’s been months. I’m better now. I know better. I can be sensible. It won’t be like before. I’m a different person.

Surely it would be better to live a messy, flawed, sometimes not very pretty life that was real and honest, than to constantly try to live up to a life of perfection that was actually a sham?