The Ethical Dilemma of Bring Yourself to Work
For anyone who’s ever felt they needed to wear a mask at work or lost their soul doing so.
Dear Readers,
I’ve worn a mask. Early in my career, I bought into the lie that I needed to be hardened in spirit, voice, and attire. So, in the morning hours, I bent a steel cage around my soft soul. I painted myself into a palatable something, swallowing and silencing the jagged parts. Before I left, I straightened the mask of masculinity, and off to work I went.
What did I have to lose? Oh, just my soul, of course.
Masks cause little deaths — little soul deaths. When you wear a mask, nobody (not even you) gets to find out who you really are. — Orbiting the Giant Hairball
To fit in, to grow, I carved off parts of myself. I mirrored others, and then others mirrored me. The cage I built was gradual. Each time I was inauthentic, another bar grew in place, keeping me from my intuition, creativity, and self-expression — until I felt so trapped, I quit my job.
I thought “bring yourself to work would be my salvation.
After joining a startup, I advocated for inclusion, authenticity, and “bring yourself to work.” And I lived it. I felt comfortable bringing my femininity, optimism, and even anger to the executive table. But I didn’t just bring my soul, I gave my soul. So, when that company was acquired, my identity was intertwined. I didn’t know myself without it.
Thus began my period of railing against “bring yourself to work” because a company didn’t deserve all of me. What I failed to understand during this period was that by slipping back into the cage, I would give myself the emotional buffer to create harm.
Because we’ve been having the wrong conversation, this isn’t about whether someone should or shouldn’t bring themselves to work, but why we should bring our morality to work, no matter what. Lest we leech out all humanity at a time when wealth and opportunity inequity is so high.
Don’t sell your soul to get anywhere because you may need it one day.
We need work to resonate with us, or we’ll feel out of whack with our soul. Being anywhere too long that’s disconnected from our values leads to self-alienation, detachment, cynicism, and even exploitation.
The phrase “bring yourself to work” has felt complex, hollow, and laden with false promises. While the idea of bringing the full swath of humanity into work may be romantic, it’s not necessarily safe or easy. 👇
- Spoken and unspoken norms enforce culture fit > authenticity. Folks found that “bring yourself to work” came with contingencies, especially when personalities weren’t palatable or defied societal expectations. They had a choice to leave or adapt to feedback. So, on went a mask.
- It’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t. On one hand, separation between home and work gives privacy, boundaries, and an unentangled identity. But on the other hand, holding work at a distance is potentially missing out on a part of life that could give meaning or connection.
- Individuals will always curate themselves when being observed. At work, we’re on display — contradictions, bad days, mistakes — it’s all there. So, we cull anything that doesn’t get rewarded and perform the things that do. It’s rather difficult to be authentic when being observed.
But I think we should try anyway.
We owe it to ourselves and others to bring ourselves to work.
By this, I don’t mean tying your identity and worth to an employer, but rather, that no matter where you exist or go, bring your humanity along. Keep contributing your perspective, ideas, talents while staying connected to what makes you, you — values, morals, ethics.
Authenticity without accountability is hollow.
In the past, “bring yourself to work” focused on small talk, office parties, personality aspects. It conjured a certain frivolity. Whether you do those things or not is a personal decision with pros and cons (see above). But it’s one thing not to socialize at work, and it’s another to deny yourself.
If you push away your humanity, it’s that much easier to push away others’ humanity. There’s moral drift when you disconnect who you are from your work. And if you’re a leader, this desensitization is devastating.
Under capitalism, we have soul death across U.S. politicians, corporate leaders, and company founders. The lack of personal accountability to humanity feels like an endless tide.
Work is a critical piece of our daily lives and a major way we contribute to the fabric of society. It can’t and shouldn’t be severed.
If you sever the work from the “real you,” you’re severing yourself from accountability to others for what happens at work.
There’s a reason in Severance that the brain is severed in two. You can’t truly separate who you are at work from who you are at home. They’ll intertwine. If you’re doing work that’s harmful to humanity, nature, Earth, that will change you. The mask at work can take over or run on autopilot.
And autopilot is for the machines, and we’re not machines.
Machines don’t consider humanity; they’re not accountable to a sense of morality. But we should be. We owe it to ourselves, our families, our communities to care about morality in our work.
Each time you shield your soul, you’re keeping yourself in parts. The more you do it, the harder it is to reassemble the parts into your whole.
There are a lot of good reasons to wear a mask or a cage at work. But everywhere you go, you leave an imprint — make it true to who you are or who you’re becoming. Humanity is an all-the-time type of thing.
xoxo,
Courtney
✍️Hi, I’m Courtney! I’m one of the founders of EverMore, a new company dedicated to helping others grow authentic lives in and out of work.
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