authenticity

The world is full of inauthenticity and driven by inauthenticity. Authenticity is such a rarity that the pursuit of it is considered to be strange to most people. My understanding of authenticity is different from most people. People think it’s about kindness or not being fake, but this is merely the phenotype. The underlying qualities of authenticity are about introspection (knowing your values) and alignment (living according to your values).

At this point in my life, I have five years of work experience. It’s an eventful five years, but I’m ready for my time in SF to come to an end. I will probably get my MBA at some point in the near future. I feel like I have to make a choice: whether I want continue going down the path of inauthenticity, which is low-risk and certain, or take the road less traveled down the path authenticity, which is high-risk and uncertain.

In the beginning of my career, I felt like I was learning a lot. It was a fascinating arc of growth. There are parts of every job that you dislike, but the growth made it all worth it. Around the end of every job, you feel like you aren’t growing anymore, so you leave for your next opportunity where you are able to grow again. This cycle continues on and on.

The problem lies in that every job requires compromises to authenticity. Because I work in finance, for example, I must wear business casual. I can’t wear what I want to the office. If I start my company, I am still subject to the whims of customers and investors. Until you reach financial freedom, you are always making compromises in your life, inclusive of your authenticity. If you have kids, then you are making compromises in your life to take care of your dependents. It never stops; it’s just an endless cycle of compromise until you die.

I don’t like to do that. I don’t like to compromise. I like to live my life according to my own terms. I would rather fail on my terms than succeed on someone else’s. This has made me quite disagreeable in life. It has made things quite difficult to me. But I don’t think life is about making things easy. I could compromise my authenticity for the rest of my life, but I don’t want to. The range of outcomes in my life is still so wide, but the negative outcomes have mostly been de-risked. I’m debating between stagnation, limited upside, or outsized upside.

When we did a firm-wide enneagram assessment, the facilitator asked me to reflect on what the weaknesses of the type four are. It’s quite obvious; being authentic makes me disagreeable in environments that don’t value authenticity. But, to me, that doesn’t matter. If being authentic is the most important thing in the world to me, then why would it matter if it costs me in life? Yes, I could have gotten more ahead if I made more compromises to my authenticity, but why would I want to do that when authenticity is the most important thing in my life?

Living an authentic life is difficult in a world that doesn’t value authenticity, which is the world in which we occupy. This journey to be more authentic has cost me in so many ways, some of which I have mitigated by compromising my authenticity. However, we don’t become duller versions of our personality over time. Whatever qualities that define us and make us different only become more pronounced over time. Things I was willing to compromise before become more painful later in life. Every month and every year I become less willing to compromise my authenticity, which leaves me to where I am now. I am continuing my journey to be more authentic, no matter the pain, within reason.