What does it mean to be authentic? What standard do you go by? What external standard can there possibly be, if authenticity is being true to the inner self? How do you know?
Christina Roberts has some answers. Her Saybrook dissertation was a study of creative older individuals, and she found a clear link between their creative work and their sense of having lived an authentic life.
It may be, she suggests, that living authentically is itself a creative act.
She writes about her finding at The New Existentialists. It’s a must read.