Being Authentic

A Memoir

By: Morhaf Al Achkar

Narrated by: Peter Bierma

Our existence is fragile. The being we are today may not be the same tomorrow. I learned that in many intricate ways, long before the COVID-19 pandemic, so I do not take today for granted.

On the eve of Thanksgiving 2016, I received the diagnosis of stage 4 lung cancer. I have survived more than three years now. But I do not know what tomorrow will bring. I do not even know if tomorrow will come. Next to dying, I fear the spread of cancer to my brain and losing my ability to think, speak, or write. This loss would be devastating to me.

With my cancer, I have the advantage of knowing that my existence is finite. The fragility of our life and my awareness of my finitude made me want to be authentic. Therefore, I am writing this memoir to be authentic - we become our true selves when we author who we are. With writing my narrative, I have an opportunity to view it, reflect on it, and, if we wish, edit it.

Authenticity, in the end, is not a task that gets done, once and for all. Authenticity is a fragile experience of becoming. And we do it together. We become our real selves for a restless moment, and we can lose authenticity in an instant if we do not keep our sights on it.

I have encountered many individuals to whom I said, “You should write your story!” I thought as I am doing this same work that the best way to encourage others to write is for me to tell my own story. I do not aspire to set an example. If anything, I hope to attract a dialogue and spur reflection. With COVID-19, we are living a heightened awareness of our existence and consciousness. Now is the time to bring more of these reflections and dialogues. Now is the time to share more stories.

I am afraid of being forgotten. Death does frighten me. But more than dying, I am scared of having no one remember me or, even worse, to be recognized differently from who I was. At the same time, I have never thought that I was entitled to ask others not to forget me. Not to be forgotten is precisely what I want. I recognize we forget folks, and life goes on. To imagine or to aspire not to vanish from memories is a delusion. Still, that is what I aspire to. I tell my story, so those who wish to remember me can have it. I aim to make it possible for them to know me as who I am. I have lost many, and it has troubled me that we can forget.

We are losing thousands of people every day to this pandemic, and I do not want them to be forgotten. I hope we can keep their memory alive, and I worry about letting them die again if their stories are forgotten. Writing is my way of defying death as nothingness.

As I am writing Being Authentic, I have the other in my mind. I am writing for someone other than myself to find this. I am writing to every human. Is that a lofty goal? Yes. But what if I have no other chance to speak to my listeners after this?

Because of my fear of being forgotten, I have written to invite as many people as possible to know me. I also mean to tell as much as I could about myself. While doing that, I hoped to transcend my narrow focus on myself to leverage my curiosity and attempt to find matters about which others can be curious. But neither did I want to focus only on my error, nor this book is an attempt to redeem myself from my mistakes.

I did not omit the mistakes, and I have opened ample space to reflect on what was not consistent with who I thought I was. I leverage this space to relate to those who err every day. They are the brave among us who choose to continue to act. I, like these people, hope to continue doing something, and that means we will continue to err.

While I am writing for the other, I am simultaneously writing for myself. I am one of the listeners and will test the subject as it gets written. My criteria are stricter. I want to say, “This is my narrative."

©2020 Morhaf Al Achkar (P)2020 Morhaf Al Achkar