Embarking on the 57th year of life I feel the need to be 'wise', meaning to keep on discovering my inner wishes and living them out. Fortunately I have already taken the giant step to abandon a job that had required me to be consistently inauthentic putting on an act to meander around the whims and eccentricities of superiors and a false front towards business associates. Though I still occasionally fantasize about the beautiful holiday home I may be able to enjoy had I continued to draw a good salary, I more often than not feel grateful that I have the means to retire early from corporate life.
By far the biggest satisfaction is the liberated self, ie. being who you want to be. Indeed I want to carry this to a higher level, to avoid as much "bad faith" or self deception as possible.
Existentialists believe that human beings have a tendency to deceive themselves about why they do what they do. "Bad faith" is denying ourselves the freedom to choose and blaming it on external circumstances for not being able to do so. For example a person fears having to choose between being an artist or taking over the helm of the family business. When he convinces himself he has no choice (due to social and family pressure) he is acting in bad faith. These self deceptions can be so deeply ingrained in us that it becomes part of our belief system.
To be truly authentic one must uncover the true intentions behind one's actions and weed out self deceptions. To give a preposterous example, say I discover that I love Chinese calligraphy to a point that I can spend everyday of the week day and night at it and giving up my other commitments. However I deny myself the choice of doing that for fear of being frowned upon by my husband that I am not doing something useful. Hence I choose not to do what I love by convincing myself that I am better say at counselling or investing money which I may not really be.
What I am trying to drive at is that at this juncture of my life, I should continue to discover the things that I really want to do, something true to my nature and weed out self deceptions which create the false "whys" for what I am doing.
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