On owning all the parts

creepy letters, integrity, appreciation, creativity and authenticity

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It doesn’t take years of deep soul-searching to forget our ambitions and remember who we are. If we pause our striving and take in the breadth of our experience, amazing things happen, and everything becomes clear.

Sometimes it just takes a walk or a little time away from digital devices. Sometimes it’s about paying a little more attention than we’d paid a minute before. When we gift ourselves these moments, we can remember our mission. This is true of creatives. This is true of everyone.

I’m thinking about clarifying messages and how we share them in impactful ways because this week marks the wrap-up of another semester. I am witnessing the graduation of another group of amazing humans I’ve had the privilege of teaching.

These young people will likely do more than I can imagine. They will be productive. They have big dreams. But they are not only what they do.

Every semester I think about the final message I want to leave with my students on the last day of class (assuming they’re listening), and this semester the message that keeps coming up is the challenge of finding and maintaining the confidence to influence others without compromising authenticity or integrity.

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Loss of integrity can be subtle, but its temptation is quite predictable. A person has ambition, so they compromise their time. Then their energy. Then themselves, just a little. Then they get the “offer of a lifetime” if only they change everything about what they want to share.

Loss of integrity due to ambition can mean bending just a little to find ourselves in better favor with those around us because we think we have to, or it fits the cultural norm of today—of working too hard or too much or doing too many things or censoring ourselves or placating others. But soon, the little moments add up.

To me, compromising integrity is connected to a desire to feel included and accepted which, ironically, keeps us from being ourselves with others. And it keeps us from true compassion. Our aims, ambitions, strengths, and challenges can get in the way if we assign too much weight to them. Ambition is great, but it can carry us away swiftly and make us forget our purpose.

Here’s the paradox: I spent the entire semester lecturing about the value of being aware and the necessity of being conscientious of others. Awareness is vital, but so is letting go and allowing ourselves to experience our lives genuinely. After all, self-awareness is not so much about our desires as it is an accurate assessment of action and a rooting into our mission rather than potential outcomes.

I speak from experience, of course. People have tried to scare me into silence when I’ve voiced opinions they didn’t agree with (I got a death threat to my Wix site after a post I made in 2020, for instance).

If I think further back, I compromised the integrity of my voice for many years as a writer (and human) because I was trying to sound smart. I entered college not knowing the difference between a simple and complex sentence, so when I somehow started studying English to write, I realized I’d have to make up for lost time. Moreover, I’d have to PROVE to others that I had the chops. So I used big words. I mimicked. I studied in all my free time, maybe to the detriment of my health.

Integrity means wholeness, the summation of integers. But the whole is representative of what is actually here today, not what we want to be here. So in compromising our voices to sound like another or hide from others, we lose pieces. Likewise, in rushing to “catch up,” we sometimes lose our footing in the moment. Sometimes we even fall apart.

To amass influence (via writing or otherwise) is to put ourselves in a position of extreme vulnerability. One more example: I recently received a personal letter in the mail to my home address that was addressed to me, but the writer used “Genius” in place of my name throughout the letter (I’m guessing facetiously, but either way it’s creepy).

I won’t get into more details, but it was a strange letter. I am happy to say, it didn’t rattle me the way it once would have because I know this letter is a reflection of the individual writing it, not me. Such extreme responses are a clear reminder that we must be willing to be disliked, to attract strange attention, to go against what’s easy, and to be unabashedly ourselves in the face of strangeness, hatred, and even insanity to maintain integrity.

Every word and message we share has an impact. So to waste authenticity because we want to amass adulation because we want to fit our perception of someone else’s desires (or because we want to hide from the creepers) is to waste time. And I, for one, don’t feel like I have time to waste.

So on the last day of class, my message will not be simple to put into action, but I think it will be clear.

Maintaining integrity means finding your center and holding it. It means finding your message and exploring it. It means sharing it unapologetically. But it also means letting go of expectations. And if you amass any influence, even on the smallest scale, your entire job becomes staying whole.

This is the challenge of leadership, impactful storytelling, and living in the world in a way that allows us to remember its splendor and not dwell in our silly ambitions means not folding beneath the weight of what we think should happen. It’s not even about hiding to avoid the potentially dangerous. It’s about showing up and appreciating the splendor that exists all around us, despite our expectations.

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