“Authenticity is the daily practice of letting go of who we think we’re supposed to be and embracing who we are.”
– Brent Brown, “The Gifts of Imperfection”
About ten years into my career, I started working with an old test engineer named Tom. Tom confused the shit out of me.
My confusion stemmed from my perception of status in the engineering world. Test engineers were the lowest rung on the status ladder and usually grumpy.
But Tom loved it. He thrived. He smiled. He enjoyed the day.
As I sat next to him in the lab while he showed me exactly how my latest release was broken, I asked him about his buoyant attitude.
“I discovered a long time ago that in my heart, I’m a test engineer, not a design engineer. I like the minutiae and process of testing. I like dreaming up ways to break the system. I like designing tests, and quite frankly, I like sticking it to the developers. So I let it (design) go and embraced testing.”
We’re a society that longs for who we think we’re supposed to be.
And how do we set our targets for that? Through mimetic desires, of course. We look outside of ourselves to find a model. Most times, we pick our models based on some metaphysical perception of status.
I’m no different, and I’m deep in the throws of it right now — finding authenticity.
True authenticity demands The Letting Go.
