Everybody Wants Authenticity Until Someone is Actually Authentic

THOUGHTS OUTSIDE THE OFFICE

Everybody loves authenticity now. It is practically a marketing package. Be real. Be vulnerable. Show the behind-the-scenes. No filters. Tell your truth. But for the love of God, make sure your truth has good lighting, acceptable grammar, a satisfying ending, and does not make anybody uncomfortable.

That is apparently the deal.

We say we want people to be authentic, but what we actually seem to want is a very specific version of authenticity. We want somebody to admit they are overwhelmed, but preferably while holding an attractive coffee mug in a clean kitchen. We want somebody to talk about failure, but only after they have already turned it into a success story. We want grief after the lesson has been learned. Anger after it has been properly sanitized. Fear once it has become inspirational. Messiness, provided somebody cleaned it up before posting.

Actual authenticity is considerably less convenient. Sometimes somebody is still mad. Sometimes they have not figured out what the lesson was. Sometimes there is no lesson. Sometimes a terrible thing happened and the conclusion is simply, “Well, that was fucking terrible.” Apparently that is not sufficiently uplifting.

We have turned vulnerability into something people are expected to perform correctly, which seems a little backwards. If I am required to package my worst moment into a tasteful carousel with six takeaways and a beige background, I am not sure we are still discussing vulnerability. We are discussing content.

And I am not criticizing people who choose carefully what they share. Everybody should. Nobody owes the internet full access to their life. Frankly, the internet has demonstrated repeatedly that it cannot be trusted with scissors, much less unrestricted access to somebody’s personal business.

What interests me is the way we respond when somebody does choose to be genuinely open and then fails to do it in the approved manner. We love somebody saying, “I struggled.” We get nervous when they say, “I am struggling.” Those are two completely different sentences.

“I struggled” means the danger has passed. The speaker has processed it, learned from it, probably purchased a journal, and can now explain the experience without ruining brunch. “I am struggling” means there may not be an ending yet. That makes people twitchy. We want the documentary after editing, not somebody handing us the raw footage.

The same thing happens with personality. Everybody says they like people who are “real” until the real person is occasionally annoyed, blunt, exhausted, indecisive, jealous, impatient, contradictory, insecure, too loud, too quiet, wrong about something, or simply not charming that day. Then suddenly authenticity has developed terms and conditions.

Be yourself. But not like that.

We also have a fascinating relationship with honesty. People constantly say, “I just want people to be honest with me.” No, you probably want people to be honest with you about things you are already emotionally prepared to hear. That is not the same service.

Actual honesty has terrible bedside manner. Sometimes somebody tells you something and your immediate reaction is not enlightenment. It is, “Well, I wish you had kept that particular piece of personal growth to yourself.” And that does not necessarily mean they should not have said it. It means authenticity is not always pleasant.

Real people are inconvenient. We contradict ourselves because we are carrying twenty different thoughts at the same time. We love people we are furious with. We miss things we are relieved to have escaped. We can be grateful and miserable in the same afternoon. We can know something was the right decision and still hate that we had to make it. None of that fits particularly well on a motivational graphic.

I think social media made this stranger because now we are constantly watching people curate “real life.” There is an entire genre of video dedicated to showing the imperfect morning. The person wakes up late, except somehow there was already a camera positioned beside the bed. Their hair is messy, but in a way requiring some architectural planning. The children are chaotic, but conveniently chaotic within frame. Coffee spills, but not on anything expensive. Then soft music begins and the caption says something about giving yourself grace.

Meanwhile, if my actual morning falls apart, there is no acoustic guitar. There is somebody yelling that they cannot find a shoe while I am holding the shoe. That is authenticity. It has terrible production values.

I also think this is why people sometimes get uncomfortable with somebody who refuses to pretend everything is fine. Not because they necessarily dislike the person. Because somebody saying the uncomfortable thing out loud breaks the little social agreement that we are all going to walk around pretending not to notice certain things.

We like honesty until it changes the temperature in the room. We like vulnerability until we feel responsible for responding to it. We like authenticity until it requires us to accept that another person’s experience might not be tidy enough for us to understand.

And sometimes the problem is even simpler. Sometimes the authentic version of somebody is just not universally likable.

I think we have forgotten that this is allowed. You can be a decent person and still irritate somebody. You can be intelligent and occasionally say something stupid. You can be kind and still have days when your patience has packed a bag and left the state. You can be confident and insecure about something ridiculous. You can care deeply what people think while simultaneously announcing that you do not care what people think.

Human beings contain inconsistencies. Otherwise we would be instruction manuals.

I would actually trust somebody less if every opinion, emotion, behavior and life choice lined up into one perfectly coherent personal brand. That sounds exhausting. It also sounds suspicious. Because real life has a way of ruining themes.

Sometimes you are doing wonderfully and crying in your car. Sometimes you are falling apart and having a fantastic hair day. Sometimes your professional life is going beautifully while your personal life looks like somebody shook a Monopoly board. Sometimes the exact opposite happens. There is no rule requiring all categories of your existence to fail or flourish simultaneously.

So maybe what we really mean when we say we want authenticity is that we want relatability without discomfort. We want people real enough that we can recognize ourselves in them, but not so real that we have to confront anything unpleasant.

That is understandable. It is also not authenticity.

Authenticity is somebody saying, “This is where I am,” without immediately assuring everybody that they are almost somewhere more acceptable. Sometimes they will be funny about it. Sometimes they will be graceful. Sometimes they will say it beautifully. Sometimes they will say it badly and wish they had used different words twenty minutes later.

That is the risk of dealing with people instead of press releases.

I am not advocating for saying every thought that enters your head. Some thoughts should absolutely die quietly in captivity. Nor do I think “I am just being authentic” is permission to be cruel. There are people who use “I am just honest” the same way toddlers use sticks. That is not honesty. That is poor impulse control with branding.

But I do think if we are going to spend this much time celebrating authenticity, we should probably become a little more tolerant when it arrives without makeup.

It may not have a lesson yet. It may change its mind next week. It may be annoyed. It may be contradictory. It may not be inspirational.

It may simply be true.

And maybe that is enough.

Judith L. Hampton

Attorney At Law

Hampton Law Firm

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