Authenticity in the Age of Careers 

“So, what do you do?” 

That’s usually the first thing, I’m asked after what my name is at parties and social events. It’s safe and gives a good indication of what I spend my days doing. Sometimes I toy with the idea of saying, “I’m a sailor, or, “I’m the guy that artificially inseminates horses,” just to see what the reaction will be. I tell myself that it’s a joke, but really It is a part of me that resents how much our work comes to become a representation of who we are in a polite society. And yet I have a pretty good job. I have a career many might die for. But still there remains a part of me that needs to be defined by something other than my vocation. The truth is, I love most aspects of my work, but there’s a part of it that I can never get over; the pressure to conform. 

Every career has a certain way it must be performed. Lawyers wear suits and speak English with a rhetorical flourish enough to show their learnedness. Bankers speak numbers and look not too different from lawyers. Doctors by law are not allowed to write legibly for the human eye. There’s an expectation of how someone in a certain career ought to perform. 

Some of it is necessary, a lot of it is simply force of habit from a bygone era. There are rules to follow that go beyond the technical and seep into how you ought to dress, speak, and even the type of attitudes and values you need to have in the workplace. There’s a prescription for the type of person we need to be. But there lies the contradiction.  

Modern work requires people that feel free and independent, but not so much so that their tastes and preferences become too niche and sporadic as to prevent mass production of goods to satisfy customer needs. It requires people who feel like they are not subject to ideology or predetermined taste, but who are willing to be nudged, to be commanded in the subtlest of ways, people who can be guided without force, allowed to innovate within parameters.

I feel like on top of the work, we need to become a personality package, one that can be sold and exchanged, especially in the service sector. We easily become commodities, selling our authentic expressions of ourselves to fit in without friction into the corporate machinery. 

Every time we fake laugh at the boss’ joke because it’s prudent to do so, or drop jargon to sound like we’re in, to the more insidious faking of friendships and working ourselves to the bone because “that’s what a good worker does”, we lose a little part of ourselves. 

Quietly afraid of being outcompeted, straying too far from the herd, most of us try our best to be as close as possible to the path but feel separate because there is a part of ourselves we cannot express in our labour. There is, of course, a path of compliance and drowning any feelings of dissonance in distraction with anything from alcohol to mindless amusement -the entertainment industry is one of the biggest on the planet, providing us spectacle and fun to keep us amused and not too worried about how much of ourselves we cannot express. The work routines themselves are abstracted to such a level as to keep us focused on what we do, rather than why we are doing it. I’ve been in this rut many times and wondered if I could break free. 

And in my own small way, I have! Banish the thought that you can ever fully be yourself in the employ of another, but you can claw back some of what makes you interesting. I started by growing dreadlocks while I worked with a bank or using movies and pop culture references when making presentations— things a professional shouldn’t do but, dammit, I’m a professional and I say this is how I can do it. Ultimately it comes down to your answer to the question of how much authenticity matters to you in the workplace and what it looks like. Both paths are difficult and call for rigorous engagement in the paths we choose. My encouragement to not simply go on autopilot awaits in the words of Nietzsche: “The individual has always had to struggle to keep from being overwhelmed by the tribe. If you try it, you will be lonely often, and sometimes frightened. But no price is too high to pay for the privilege of owning yourself.”