Here are some quotes that stuck out to me from a recent Boundless article:
We long for reality, even fake reality.
One irony in our culture is that, for all of our praise for "spontaneity" and "radical free choice," we are remarkably conformist. In a way, we are conformist in practice (all wearing jeans) while being nonconformist in principles (believing widely contrary ideas about honesty). Yet we should be personally flexible but morally predictable. We should agree on important values and then apply them in wide-ranging, freedom-inspired ways.
Authenticity practices a gracious honesty, and it takes wisdom to know when is the best time to say the fullness of what we think and feel.
Authenticity doesn't mean we never act insincerely. This sounds rather odd, but "pretending" is, at times, essential, inevitable, and ethical. In Faking It, William Ian Miller acknowledges that although insincerity conjures up many negative connotations, "I am not a hypocrite ... for pretending to find interesting what is dull, ... [n]or am I a hypocrite for putting on a somber face at the news of the untimely death of a person I didn't especially care for."
"Let us pretend in order to make the pretense into a reality." ~C. S. Lewis~
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