There’s a lot of talk in the self-development word about authenticity.

It seems to be the buzzword that everyone’s after.

Complete self-expression is my version of authenticity, and has been the theme of my adult life. It was a response to my silence as a young person, deathly afraid of speaking for my first two decades. (Yes, it’s true.) I was silent, afraid and unheard.

Now, I regularly share about everything from airport rants to menstruation. It is liberating and gratifying. Even when the responses are less than positive, or it elicits radio silence.

Compassion figures prominently in my practice of authentic expression. Toward myself and others. But I realize that that is sometimes not the case.

Somehow authenticity has been misconstrued to mean anything goes. (“Yes, you do look fat in that dress.”)

That’s not the point, IMHO.

The goal of communication is to add positively to the world, not just to allow whatever is rumbling around in your brain to poison the space around you. More cruelty and hatred have no part in a world already overly full with those actions. Even in the name of provocation or fun. Freedom of speech is one thing. Healing is quite another.

I know that when I’m about to utter something that adds to the suffering in the world, it was not created from an authentic place. It is the voice of my ego. It is a sharing of the part of me that is also hurt, with the goal of spreading that pain.

When tempered by compassion, words and actions can be like the fire of transformation or the embrace of the Divine.

It’s not about feeling stifled, either. Swallowing down what wants to come out is not the solution. A bit of self-inquiry just might be.

• What is my intention behind the words? Is it to hurt or to heal?
• What if I didn’t say it? Would things be better or worse?
• Is there some deeper truth, about my own situation, that is being concealed by reactive meanness?

I heard the following quote some time ago:

Everything is either an act of love, or a cry for love.

I saw it again, recently, in an otherwise mediocre book I’m reading for school. I’m reminded of the deeper truth here, and how just that one idea makes everything feel better and make more sense to me.

It helps me look at horrible acts in the world through the eyes of compassion for the suffering of the aggressor. It helps me temper the reactivity when my ego proclaims the wrongness of something or someone. It does not make me an apathetic, placid person. Quite the opposite, in fact. It helps me create beauty (in the same way horseshit makes your vegetables healthy and nourishing).

And when something toxic does slip out? Well, here’s the biggest test of my compassion: Towards myself.

Can you let your voice be heard, carried on a bubble of kindness from your heart?

Can your words ALWAYS be an act of love?

Let’s try that together, shall we?