Biggie vs Tupac

The Seesaw

I think there’s a seesaw that most of us are sitting on, whether we’ve noticed it or not.

On one end is balance. On the other is authenticity. Almost nobody sits dead center — you’re closer to one side than the other, and where you sit shapes nearly everything about how your life goes.

Both ends have enormous value. That’s what makes it a real seesaw and not a morality tale. The trouble is what happens as you slide further down either side.

What they run into is the discovery that complete balance stops you from ever being anybody at all.The Balance Side

Sliding Down the Balance Side

Balance, taken far enough, curdles into something else.

The person at the bottom of that side is too afraid to take a stand or hold an opinion. They become a shell that plays all the angles in the room, all the time, adjusting to whoever just walked in. It works, right up until the day they sit down and genuinely can’t answer the question of who they are.

That moment is more disturbing than it sounds from the outside. What they run into is the discovery that complete balance stops you from ever being anybody at all.

It’s also worth naming the mental health cost of that position, because it’s real: performing a self all day is exhausting in a way that doesn’t show up on anyone’s chart. It’s the professional-grade version of saying I’m fine — and the bill for it comes due eventually.

Sliding Down the Authenticity Side

I sit squarely on the other end.

When I was a kid, somebody sat me down — I don’t remember when, and I honestly don’t remember who — and taught me that the biggest sin a person can commit is being fake. That your central responsibility as a human being is to see value and respond to it, to walk in the direction of improvement, and to stay open and honest when the road gets hard.

Whoever that was got it through to the core. To this day, nothing I accomplish matters to me if I did it the wrong way.

So I slid all the way down that side. And it comes with its own problem — a different one.

You never forget who you are. I always know exactly who I am. The problem is that you can’t get along in the world.

If you walk around fully authentic to your opinions and your manners, refusing to play along even slightly with the rules of the situation, everything eventually falls apart — unless you happen to have money coming from somewhere else. A regular person cannot simply call it like they see it and wear their passions on their sleeve. It doesn’t work. Society is, on the whole, repelled by it. You get read as a risk. Unstable. Difficult. Pick your adjective.

That seat is built for arriving safely, not for arriving somewhere new.The Middle

The People in the Middle

Some people land near the center — luck, upbringing, education, whatever combination got them there. And from where I’m sitting, those people tend to do well.

Reach only for what’s already achievable. Confirm it’s all planned out before you try. Small steps. If what you want is to be successful, the middle of that seesaw is almost certainly where you want to be sitting.

Here’s the part that gets me, though.

Every day, all of us walk through situations that are plainly absurd, and everybody in the room knows it. The middle-seesaw response is to shut your mouth and smile. And the thing is, it stopped bothering them thirty years ago. They’re not suffering. They have the corner office.

So if you want to be a visionary — if you want to change things, or bring a new idea into a situation that badly needs one — the middle will not get you there. That seat is built for arriving safely, not for arriving somewhere new.

Pick Your Seat

That’s the whole thing, and I don’t think there’s a right answer.

One end is floating: never too invested in anything, never quite exposed, and eventually not quite anyone. The other end is knowing precisely who you are and what you believe — and accepting that the way you carry yourself is going to cost you, in employment and in a dozen other places, over and over.

Both seats are occupied by people who made a reasonable trade.

Just know which one you’re in. Most people never look down.