Living authentically wiser than obsessing about reputation

Last week I said that psychologically healthy people are not slaves to social custom, but neither do they recklessly disregard it. A few days later, this idea engaged me and two outspoken buddies over a pool table and a pitcher of Budweiser that only they drank because I'm a beer snob.

The conversation evolved to the question of social/professional reputation. How are healthy people related to their reputations? How do we shape it, manage it? When necessary, protect it? Should we care about it? If so, how much? Should parents admonish their children to care about their reputations? Or raise children with sufficient ego to live and act independently of this concern? Or both?

When it comes to my children, it's definitely both. Adolescents often struggle in the contradiction of simultaneously ignoring matters of reputation and weighing reputation too heavily. Peers are a matter of life and death, in some cases literally, yet the spoken mantra of teens is universally "I don't care what anyone thinks."

So it's up to parents to throw teens a lifeline of encouragement when they are exaggerating the importance of peers, and to insist that they conform when reputations really do matter. If one of my sons puts a baseball-size hickey on his girlfriend's neck, he's gonna hear from me, despite his insistence that it doesn't matter what anyone thinks, and despite how cool his peers might think he is. Love and desire are beautiful, intimate, private matters, and risking the girlfriend's reputation to parade such things in public is not OK.

But when my buddies turn the question on me -- do I care about my reputation? -- my answer is yes and no and maybe and kinda.

When I was asked to resign as basketball coach at my son's school because a boy -- his parents, actually -- suggested I had a prurient interest in the rebounding drill, and when my bishop, already predisposed to antagonism toward me, decided to "investigate" the claim, well, I was deeply invested in my reputation. This is the sort of accusation that can permanently damage my ability to make a living, even when swiftly exonerated, which I was.

So, in cases of egregious slander, yes, I really care about my reputation.

There is a short list of folks in my inner circle with whom I care greatly about my reputation. My children top that list. My best friend, Paul. A former graduate school professor. Erin. Kim. There are a few more, but the list is surprisingly short.

After that, my attention to matters of reputation takes a radical nose dive. First off, I'm not sure I have that firm a grip on exactly what my general reputation is. I'm not kidding. When people say, "You know, Steven, I think people really see you as ..." I'm often intrigued, surprised, even startled, whether the sentence ends in something positive or negative.

I'm saying that, like most people, I have lots of reputations, good and bad. I don't keep tabs on it very often. Life is better, richer, freer and more creative when I don't. I obsessed about it when I was 19, but, gotta tell you, it's great to be 50!

My favorite Aesop's fable is about a father and son leading a donkey. They overhear the criticism, "Why waste a donkey; someone should ride it." So the son rides, and the next criticism is, "Lazy boy! Making his father walk!" So they switch places. Sure enough: "Despicable father! Forcing his son to walk!" They both get on the donkey. "How cruel to so burden the poor beast in the hot sun!" So the father and son resolve to carry the donkey, who bucks and kicks in terror, falls off the bridge into the river and drowns.

Do I have to tell you the moral of the story?

How do I shape, manage and protect my reputation? Largely by not aiming at my reputation! My goal, rather, is authenticity. I strive to live authentically. Or, as author Richard Bach says it, "Live never to be ashamed if anything you say or do is published around the world, even if what is said is not true."

Live authentically. Live with integrity. But, I should warn you, this way of living, while a radical freedom and a breath of fresh air, also comes with an ironic and bitter price tag. Living authentically will, from time to time, sooner or later, cost you your reputation.

Gives me the wee willies.

Steven Kalas is a behavioral health consultant and counselor at Clear View Counseling Wellness Center in Las Vegas and the author of "Human Matters: Wise and Witty Counsel on Relationships, Parenting, Grief and Doing the Right Thing" (Stephens Press). His columns appear on Tuesdays and Sundays. Questions for the Asking Human Matters column or comments can be e-mailed to skalas@reviewjournal.com.