A Few More Thoughts
I can think of no other column in the tenure of I Was Just Thinking that stimulated more comments back to me than the one I published last Friday. It is pleasing to see. My goal has always been to communicate to the readers what is currently on my mind; not for my own benefit, although much of the time it is cathartic, but to use my thoughts to stimulate others to think about the subject and how it relates to them.
Sometimes it works, other times it doesn’t. Last Friday’s column struck a nerve and got people’s juices flowing.
Of all the comments I received the one that struck me the most was a reader saying, “Your column reminded me of the fact that, for most of my life, I haven’t known how to be true to myself, because I hadn’t figured out what I stood for. I have only been able to understand who I am, later in life. At this point it seems easier to stay true to me, because I now know what that means.”
This is another level of thinking, and it makes sense. Most of us have very little idea when we leave the nest what our core beliefs are. Certainly, parents try to give their kids a true north to guide them, but as idealistic as that sounds, a person hasn’t faced real-world issues until they are living day-to-day without a safety net. As a young person you are exploring, and that means leaning into things that are new to you; it means getting uncomfortable.
And what if, after leaving home, you embark on a life that is different than the world you were raised in? What if the path you start down leaves you isolated; without a mentor or a family member who can offer relevant advice. As a child of two parents who didn’t go to college and worked classic 1970’s and 80’s middle income jobs, the moment I graduated and started working for a public company, I was effectively on my own.
What is interesting about that leap into the unknown, is you quickly discover that many of the principles you were taught at home, aren’t relevant; or better yet, easy to translate into your new activity. This immediate disconnect is what leads to people saying, “my parents just don’t get it.”
As I reflect on my first job, I had no idea how to process everything that was coming my way. Thankfully, some of it was easy to decipher right from wrong based on core beliefs. For example, in the Georgia district of an international pharmaceutical company, of which I was a member, it was commonplace for my colleagues to party and cheat on their spouse anytime we had a district meeting. This was a shock to me and, as I said, easy for me to discern who I was and what I wouldn’t do. Other things weren’t so obvious.
It is kind of like when you are raising a child, and you constantly worry if your kid is running with the wrong crowd. Poor friend choices can lead to disastrous outcomes. And yet, who they become friends with is reasonably random.
I think it is fair to say how you start your journey as an adult can also be random.
I have met people who firmly express their values early in life and even seem to carry a chip on their shoulder about their personal confidence in who they are. You probably know people like that as well. Interestingly, in my experience they are often viewed by others as closed-minded and often fail to achieve success beyond whatever bubble their life has existed within. It is hard to grow if you are unwilling to get uncomfortable.
And that is the crux of the question. How do you know at an early age what you stand for when you have limited exposure to the world? For me, I was almost immediately overwhelmed and seemingly on a conveyor belt that was taking me to places I didn’t know how to process or even tie to my original value system. At times I felt like a piece of luggage in the bowels of the Denver airport that was supposed to be transferred to Kansas City but was on a high-speed conveyor belt destined for a plane bound for Berlin.
If you follow the premise that we leave home with a rough idea of who we are, only to experience things that we don’t know how to process; then when do we begin to internally wonder about our foundation and if we are staying true to ourselves? I don’t know how to answer that, but I will offer a few ideas based on my life.
It seems to me it takes an event, or sequence of events, to push you to wonder. Think of it like this, when you are faced with your deepest challenges, you must rely on something. If your basis of how you live your life is working, but doesn’t feel totally like you, when tragedy hits you need something deeper to draw on and you will likely ask hard questions about your life.
The death of a family member, or friend is a good example of a moment when you need to draw on your core. Standing over the casket of a loved one is one of the most emotional experiences you will ever have, and if you have lived through this moment, you know there are more questions, doubts, and regrets flooding through you than you can describe. In my case, all the things I had pursued that I thought I wanted, or needed, seemed silly. At that moment, I was in touch with who I was.
And yet, even a tragedy might not be enough for you to resolve the internal question of am I being true to myself. It is hard to change your course.
As I work through this, I think it comes when you begin to see the end of something. Whether that is your life, your career, or your marriage. When you are facing the loss of something meaningful, life forces you to look at yourself; to honestly assess your life. In my view, it is at this moment when you ask yourself the questions, who am I, and am I being true to me.
If you have experienced this, you understand the feedback comment I referenced above becomes the optimal balancing act. You realize that your path may not have been exactly as you would have hoped when you left home, but you also realize the path you followed had merits and gave you the life you live. For me, I think that is okay. Both things can be true; you can wish you acted more consistent with what you hoped your values were, while at the same time accepting that you didn’t really know how to be true to yourself because you were defining yourself in real time.
As I said last week, it is okay to seek to be true to yourself, but based on the comments I got, I think it is equally okay to not know who you are at any given moment in time.
I am reminded of the study which found that fortune 500 executives’ life expectancies are worse than their peer group after they retire. Why is this? Could it be they operated as an executive, with a clear vision of who they were, and it was tied to their work; and when their easily followed direction was gone, they had no idea how to be true to who they were because they didn’t know themselves beyond their job? I don’t know.
What I do know is that I am moving into a phase in my life where I where I attempting to define how I want to live; how I can be true to who I am. And you know what? I am concluding that questioning whether I was true to myself over the preceding decades isn’t the point; the point is do I now know who I am and how I want to live? In order for me to take this step, I must accept that any actions I might have taken before that left hard feelings or a poor impression of me are in the past and must stay relegated to the past.
I don’t know where you are in your life or personal journey. Regardless, give yourself a break. There is no more accurate statement than to say we are all imperfect beings, living in a world that seems to suggest perfection is desired or achievable.
I am starting to figure out what it means to be true to who I am; I hope you find a path to your own form of peace.
