Little Victories

I was speaking with a friend whose life is going through a bit of an upheaval. They’ve begun the long and tedious task of putting their life under a microscope, identifying the pieces that they’ve only viewed as a whole thus far, and determining what should be kept and what should be dissected out.

At the end of our conversation, my friend said something that struck a chord with me: “I know it’s a cliché,” they said, “but we all really do have to find ourselves.”

“Indeed we do,” I thought to myself.

I’ve long been fascinated by the intricate webs we weave when it comes to how we see ourselves, how we portray ourselves, and how others actually perceive us. It’s been something I’ve always wanted to write about, but I've been unable to explain or piece together on a level I hope to understand or define. It seems as difficult a question as the meaning of a life itself. Honestly, I find that frustrating.

But, for whatever I can’t understand about my identity, or its components, this much I do know: that my best life, my truest life, can only be reached through a transparency that unifies all of those three things—my perception, my reflection, and others’ perceptions of me. A difference between the three, to me, signifies a break in an important chain of integrity that I value.

These ideas about identity and one’s true self were not always important to me. Like many, I believe I spent a great deal of my life content with the distractions we accumulate and surround ourselves with in the mistaken pursuit of adding value to our lives. In fact, I think my life became something where I let those distractions define me, until I reached a point at which I experienced a dramatic change, something similar to that through which my friend is going.

During that transitional phase, I struggled to hold on to, cling to, the things that had become important to my life. For me, it seemed like a fight to keep what I thought I had earned, what I had become comfortable with, and what I thought I was, to myself and others. I fought to keep my life the “same” as possible, and I met each wave or stage of change that came at me with a countering denial of equal strength.

It took some time to realize that my denials were doing nothing more than draining my strength, prolonging my difficulties, and postponing the inevitable. I finally recognized what I was doing, came to understand why I was doing it, and then made the conscious choice to stop.

I remember that time, not as the moment at which I lost, but instead as the point at which I began letting go of the trappings I’d surrounded myself with in order to insulate myself from the external world. And, as those things began to fall away, I felt more and more released. I felt more and more freedom.

Stripped bare of those things material and emotional that had long been too important to me, I found it easier to fill my life with the simpler and less complicated things that would give me equal, and sometimes even greater, pleasure. I rededicated myself to being an even more involved father. I began writing again. I reached out to friends, and I put more effort into the quality of the relationships around me.

Yet even those things couldn’t keep all of the questions crowded out of my new life. They were only replaced with a new set of questions. Instead of asking myself why this was happening to me, I was instead left with the time and ability to ask myself about who I was, who I had become, what I had done with my life and what imprint I had made, and what I thought was the meaning of my life.

I think we all face these questions sometime in our lives, be it because of a forced course change, our age, or simply a moment of curiosity prompted by the monotony of our routine existence. We want to understand these things, I believe, in order to either validate our lives or our choices, or assign some purpose to our existence.

They can be painful questions sometimes, and they can be further complicated, or more difficult to explore, when they come at a point where you may be traveling the path solo. There is a tendency to let doubt creep in when you are in that situation, and let it add another “why” to the list.

The answers are often elusive, or are at least so for me. At times they seem as difficult as my efforts to solve the perplexities of identity, and I have to admit that I enjoy continually pondering them anyway.

And, when I can’t answer those things, or I tire of contemplating them, or I grow frustrated with some other aspect of my life, I often find myself falling back on the “little victories" of life. The gleeful abandon of my daughters’ laughs. Watching them take shape as persons. The satisfaction of seeing and bringing together a few friends for fun. Giving someone a laugh. The feeling of being healthy. The knowledge of having given something my best. Being able to compose something that expresses well. The warm embrace of a close friend. Giving back through some service to others. Listening to, or offering some small advice that helps a friend.

I don’t know if those things define me, or if, by discovering and acknowledging them I have found myself, but those are the things I carry around with me now, and that carry me.

© 2011 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.

True

Lately the concept of personal integrity has been popping up in my life, and for reasons that most likely are different from the ones you think of when those two words are used. For myself, the ideas of personal integrity, personal transparency, honesty, appropriate candor, and disclosure are all balled up into one thing I cannot cram into a singular term. I don’t know how I can achieve any one of those without achieving, or striving for, all of the other.

The particular thing that resurfaced this question for me was an instance I witnessed of a friend who was reluctant in owning a mistake they had made. They were in the process of making amends with someone they had wronged, but in the effort to do so they were only externally fixing the problem and not really examining or accepting—without excuse or rationalization—the core internal cause, motivation, or issue that created their actions. Had they done that, they may have grown personally from the experience and gained a great deal more credibility with themselves and those around them, in my humble opinion. Instead, it was all a little painful to watch happen, and I felt for everyone involved.

It reminded me of the times that I have done things like this myself. I like to think that I strive to be as honest a person I can, even at the risk of embarrassment or harm, but it has been a journey to reach a point where I consider it a priority of my life. And I still have to think about it to maintain it as a matter of practice. When I procrastinate on doing something, I have to tell myself I am procrastinating and being lazy instead of making the excuse that I needed rest or time to do it correctly. If I have one drink too many, I have to tell myself that I was being weak and wanted the feeling it would give me, and not tell myself that I deserved to let my hair down a little and enjoy myself, or did not see what I was doing. I think we all do these little, life rationalizations, and most of the time they are not really very significant. They’re small. But for me they are moments where I feel I can avoid a slippery slope or an erosion of bigger integrity issues.

The biggest illustration of this concept lies in my career. When I was younger and ambitious to a fault I was one of the best at being the company spin doctor. In fulfilling my role as a leader, or in the way I interpreted then, I saw it necessary to persuade people to see things the way the company wanted them to see it. I viewed people as either on the team or simply working a job, based on what efforts I could get from them or their attitudes about their work. I saw people as work units primarily, whose personal lives outside of my office were only a passing interest. And I hardly ever paused to listen to what I was actually saying, or sometimes asking people to see, say, think, or do.

Overlay on top of this the fact that I was myself leading a dual life. At work I was politically correct, an example of good decorum, a workaholic, a driver, responsible, and somewhat of a pseudo father figure to some. At home, around friends and family, I was a little less restrained. The rascal I think I have always been was a little more evident. My odd sense of humor was openly displayed. I was casual. I would allow myself to do silly and sometimes stupid things, and I didn’t always do the most responsible things. There were things about the way I was outside of work that I would never allow to be seen at work, because at work I had a certain persona I had to project in order to maintain the respect I thought I needed to lead people well.

But over time—and maybe we call this maturing—I grew more and more uncomfortable with keeping those two people separate. I remember a particularly difficult moment in my career and personal life where I felt very alone in a very big office. At the moment I wished I’d had a friend or peer in whom I could have confided, and the lack of one reminded me of the old adage that “it is lonely at the top.” I told myself that that was the price of success, that I bought the whole thing knowingly and willingly, and I even told myself the lie that I had done so in order to best provide for my family and give them all the things they deserved. Lies are funny that way; they keep spinning deeper and deeper into bigger rationalizations.

At some point, I finally realized and had to admit to myself that I had become enamored with power and with material things. It sounds funny to say it that way, because we all associate people drunk with power as those we see widely influential, and that was not my situation. Power in my case was just me being the guy with his hands on the levers of the business, and material things were simply the nice house, nice cars, and all the other trappings of an upper-middle income lifestyle. But, back to my point, I suddenly realized what I had sold myself over to, and I felt ashamed. I began to look back over my career and recognize time after time where I had simply been the company megaphone or coerced others’ decisions and actions in order to achieve results that my employer liked and would reward me for producing.

It was a turning point for me. It was the moment where I began to reach back for the person I remembered, when I was younger, that I wanted to be. I re-read a book I had read during the period I refer to as my Bohemian Days that discussed the concepts of personal history, self awareness, and honesty with one’s self. But it was only a start, because I had a great deal of work to do in the process of trying to bring together the person I was at home and the person I was at work. In time, it became easier, although my career was probably slowed or stalled here and there by it. But over the long haul, people I worked with and people I led became more and more comfortable with that melded, more open person, and respected that person even more than my previous persona. It made me a far better leader.

Then I had to recognize that this principle could and had to be applied to every part of my life, and that work was even harder. It is, in fact, still a work in progress, and likely will be the entirety of my life. But I think the benefits of that pursuit will not only make me a better person, but a better father as well.

As for instance, what will be some of the future conversations I will have to have with my daughters? If and when Megan or Kylee ever ask me questions about those Bohemian Days, how will I answer those questions applying all of those concepts I refer to as being all balled up in one? How can I be honest with my daughters while still giving the best advice and guidance, prevent them from making mistakes that I either made or nearly made?

In the end, I have to fall back to the position of honesty and be able to admit or discuss anything I have said or done. I believe that, just like in my career, it will make me more human to my girls, more credible, and in turn earn the respect from them that will make the advice I offer more valuable to them. I also think that honesty creates trust in several directions; my display of honesty with the girls will show them that I trust them with what I am sharing and how to use it. I like that thought.

Originally published 12/3/09

© 2009 Cody Kilgore. All Rights Reserved worldwide under the Berne Convention. May not be copied or distributed without prior written permission.