A man who is having a difficult time in his marriage wanted a woman’s perspective on what women want from men. He felt confused at the complexity of how women were built (emotionally) and he felt that nothing he ever did was right. He was close to giving up and certainly had started to get the “wandering eye” – which is like crucifying his marriage while being blind folded. It is so difficult to resurrect a marriage once it has gotten “that bad.”

I am not like most women for many reasons. I tend to get along much better with men than I do with women, just because I find women too complicated and confusing for their own good sometimes. If women would just get out of their own destructive ways and drop the drama at times, their lives would be much simpler. Yes, I’m grossly generalizing and yes, there are men too who are making things complicated just like women do. I’m talking “average” here.

After our discussion of what I want in a man, or people in general, it came down to one word: AUTHENTICITY.

What is authenticity and why can “my ideal man” be summed up in this one word?

The Thesaurus describes authenticity as genuineness, legitimacy, validity, faithfulness, dependability, accuracy, realness, substance, trueness, truth, sincerity and realism, etc.

A man who is legitimately genuine and validates his faithfulness to himself by his dependability, which of course he shows by being real and by living in truth and with sincerity, shows substance of the heart. How rare is such a find!

And this goes for women too. Perhaps even more so. How many times have we seen people sell out? How many times have we sold out ourselves?

The absence of authenticity, in my opinion, is scarcity.

The Thesaurus describes scarcity as shortage, lack, insufficiency, deficiency, famine, etc.

When I first came to the United States speaking barely any English, I pronounced the word scarcity as “scar – city.” It made sense, I figured it was a city full of scars, thus we would call it “scar-city.” After about a year someone had the courage to correct my mispronunciation and told me that it was pronounced “scare-city.” That made sense too: it was a city full of scares.

A man (or a woman) living without authenticity automatically lives in scarcity, or a city full of scars or scares. Scarcity of character that is. Such a person sells out too easily, perhaps at the slightest sign when things get tough. But to hold to ones authentic Self is such a rare sight and experience, that when it actually does happen it floors us and it seems almost surreal. All this is so surprising to me as a foreigner in this country. I thought this was the country of the “free” where Freedom of Speech was the basis of what this country is founded upon. I don’t see a lot of that neither from the top nor from the rest of us.

Not sticking up for what is right for ourselves causes us to bottle up. We all know what happens with a bottle neck in a freeway. Over time the traffic gets worse until people start moving out of the area because they’ve had enough of the long commute to work. When we create a bottleneck within our own flow of feelings and emotions, the same thing happens, except that those 50 trillion living cells can’t move out of the body, they seek war instead, which often results in physical ailments such as strokes, heart problems, and cancer.

There is one simple solution to our problems: be authentic. Not according to others’ authenticity, but your own.

Your toughest challenge is to figure out who you are in the first place!

And the only place you’ll find the answer to who you are deep within is exactly there: deep within your Self. Meditate, take time out from the daily grind, sit in peace and in silence out with Mother Nature. Let her tell you who you are, then go and spread your wings and be your authentic Self. And as you do so, others who are hurting you will automatically fall away and new people who are as authentic as you are will fill the empty space. It will be a blessed day when you realize how magnificant you are!

My blessed rays of light to brighten your day!