Who are you? And who am I? Basic questions, right?
Maybe on some levels – but I think most of us, myself included, at times mask, exaggerate, or embellish who we truly are. We fake it, pretending to have things together more than we really do. Maybe not all the time, and maybe some people more than others, but to some degree we’re all guilty of it.
And in this age of social media, it’s easier than ever to fake it. A fellow advisor, Dasarte Yarnway, had a great tweet conversation on it.
We fake that our children act perfectly behaved, are the best athletes on the team, and smile at all family portrait sessions.
We fake that we can afford a certain lifestyle that supports those vacations, those cars, that home.
We fake that we’re a lot smarter than we really are.
We fake how generous we are with our money, our time, and our possessions.
Social media hasn’t necessarily introduced this idea, but it has expounded it and made it easier to accomplish and reach a broader audience.
A number of years ago I sketched out a rough drawing of the above image in a journal, thinking about how different people in my life know me on differing degrees. We all have that first circle – spouses, or kids, or best friends. These people know us really, really well. Then we have the next circle – good friends, family, mentors who know us pretty well, but not quite as well. Then we have most of our casual friends, our colleagues, and maybe our neighbors who know some degree about us. And lastly we have general acquaintances, social media, and the public at large who don’t really know us well at all.
Nothing earth shattering.
And then I realized something – well, alarming. Actually I realized two things, and I think each has an impact not just on living our lives, but also on how we handle finances.
First, it is easier and more effective to fake our true selves to those on the outer rings. These people don’t see our daily lives, and we largely control what they do see. We can tweet this, snap that, insta those, post these – all carefully selected curations of the type of life we want people to think that we live. And if that is all that they see, it’s pretty easy to convince them. But as we move inward on that circle, people are going to see more and more of who we truly are, what we really do, and what we actually say.
Our ability to carefully curate our lives deteriorates the more proximate folks become to us. It’s easy for me to tweet about family board meetings, but my kids are the only ones who are going to know the true quality of that time.
Second, we – or at least I – at times largely pay more attention to influencing those on the outer rings, and for some reason care more about their opinion than those on the inner rings. This is deeply troubling to me, but seems to correlate to the Americanism of “we buy things we don’t need with money we don’t have to impress people we don’t like.”
Really odd, right? I think most of us would agree this is silly, but how many of us still operate that way?
So where’s the connection to money, to our capital?
Everywhere.
Money is a tool, and it’s one of only a handful of currencies in life. Money not only finances (debt-innuendo intentional) the lifestyles we live, but it’s also a pretty clear indication of what’s most important to us.
It’s relatively easy to use money for public gain – and we can use it to craft a carefully curated image of who we are, and what’s important to us. And the farther out on the circle of people, the more control we have of curating that image.
Let’s use an anonymous example – and even for a noble cause: generosity. Let’s say a local businessman grants a $500k gift to the community, and even gets something named after him. Who is in a better position to know who he truly is – the outer circle of the community, or the inner circle of his family? Who saw how he handled not just a one time gift, but the month to month, year to year handling of money? Who saw his anxiety or his contentment? His greed or his generosity? His fear or his faith? His stinginess or his blessings?
If the old saying of a calendar and a checkbook are the best ways to identify someone’s priorities, then a one-time gift is a pretty isolated data source to compile that picture.
I’m not suggesting in the least that public philanthropy is bad – shoot, I’d much rather see more virtue signaling than vice signaling in the world – I’m just suggesting it’s not a pure indication of who a person is.
I’m also not offering a fix.
I’ve been wrestling with this for at least 4 or 5 years, and I don’t think I have any concrete fix-its. I do believe it should influence – at least partially – how we define success in our lives and perhaps even how we think about a legacy.
I think my takeaway is just being aware of the paradox of truly being known vs our ability to affect how we are known, and how that impacts me and those around me. How much energy, time, and resources am I exerting trying to impact those on the outer circles, vs those on the inner circles? And how much weight do I give to the opinions of the people in varying circles of my life?
I really like this quote from an excellent post by More to That:
When we think of leaving behind a legacy, we often measure it by the vastness of the ocean we want to swim in. But in reality, your legacy will live in the depths of the small pond you share with the people that matter most.
That small pond is populated not by the outer circles – but by the inner circles.
This idea of circles of people in our lives is very real – and whether we’re using social media or our money to curate a certain public image of who we are as an individual or not, only those closest to us are going to know us best. And maybe even help us know ourselves better.