The Great Risky Adventure Of Pursuing Integrity
It was supposed to be everything I wanted.
As Visiting Assistant Professor for Community-Based Learning at Grand Valley State University, I had finally found a position that reflected my unique academic interests. The department chair and college dean were supportive and I got along great with the other three professors who were starting at the same time.
Three months earlier, I had stumbled across the position while living in Minnesota with my partner Elise and our newborn son, Magnus. I had finished my PhD a year before and hadn't seen a single job listing that seemed to want my weird combination of experience, credentials, and interests. I had thought my dream of being a professor was gone. In fact, I had started making furniture and imagining a life completely different from what I had spent the previous 12 years building.
And then there it was.
I remember reading the job description over and over, thinking that I was missing some disqualifying detail or specific focus that would cause me to rethink applying. But nothing of the kind arose.
They were actually looking for me!
The previous year had been a rough one, and my confidence was at an all-time low. Nonetheless, after talking to Elise, I knew I had to apply. Within a week I was scheduling an interview (light-speed for academia), and then, shortly after that, a phone call with the dean and a job offer.
It felt amazing. All of the sudden, all my previous work seemed to matter again. My confidence slowly began to build back from nothing.
During the interview, when I asked what they were looking for from a colleague, the department chair said, "Well, we're looking for a national expert in community engagement, like yourself."
"I'm a what, now...?", I thought, totally oblivious to whatever she said next.
Best of all, they were hoping to hear later in the summer that their request to the university would be granted to add a new tenure-track position the fall after my visiting year was over. And, they hoped I would consider applying for that as well.
So, a few weeks later, we packed up and moved out to the shores of Lake Michigan, just outside Grand Rapids for the latest adventure in our life together. Within weeks of arriving, word came that there would be a national search for the tenure track position we had discussed. I would have a chance to apply for the kind of job that academics increasingly only hope for.
But after a month or so at GVSU, Elise could see that I was struggling.
There was something stirring deep in me. Something that had been stirring for years and that would not leave me alone. Clear as day I knew, this was not the work I was meant to do.
As easy as it was to know for myself, it was not easy to try and explain to anyone else. When I told the department chair and college dean that I would be leaving at the end of the semester rather than stay for the whole year and apply for the permanent position, I stumbled to articulate why I felt the need to resign.
But I knew that there was work that I could not-not do. A vocation as Parker Palmer describes it. And so Looking Bear Leadership was born - after a 12 year pregnancy.
Elise and I knew we had to go. And we knew where to go next - Montana.
We had no jobs in Bozeman, MT, and no prospects for work either. I had a colleague acquaintance that I had met at a conference in Scotland once four years before. That was it.
We also knew we'd always wonder if it could be our dream place, as we'd imagined for years. So, we packed up 1 year-old Magnus and drove the 1400 miles through minus-20 degree December temperatures from the Great Lakes, across the Great Plains, and into the Rocky Mountains.
That was five months ago, and the story isn't over yet. But as Elise and I look back one year, to this week in May 2017, we have no regrets. Not selling our house in Minnesota that we loved, not leaving the predictability of a salaried position in a university, not choosing unemployment with a 1-year old to care for, not risking the little money we had finally saved after years of schooling to chase a dream in the mountains.
Why? Because it was a clear step toward our own integrity. The living-out of our deepest values and clearest vision for a meaningful existence. The integration of our aspirations and daily experience.
Will Bozeman work out? That's not the point. The point is that we're trying to pursue our integrity. And that decision, made again everyday, is a great, risky adventure. It's a decision that many, including us, struggle to make.
Although we are captivated by an encounter with a person of great integrity, we also fear it ourselves. We sense the risk of pursuing integrity - to be judged a fool, to feel unknown, to long for final resolution that will not come.
Furthermore, we often mistake integrity for perfection, resulting in anxiety over our inevitable failure to uphold our ideals. Ultimately, many of us reject that risk of vulnerability.
However, the pursuit of integrity is not strict adherence to dogmatic rules, but abandon to the wisdom of one's heart. As opposed to images of reserved piety or unblemished righteousness, the great, risky adventure of integrity is an imperfect, white-knuckled careening into murky water.
The great adventure of this pursuit is to live a life beyond the limits of convention, animated by your ideals rather than anonymous practices someone else has deemed 'best'. To seek integration between one's aspirations, dreams, and daily ways of being is to be at once open to great and wild adventure of the pursuit of integrity, and the risks of never attaining the state you hope to embody.
Integrity is strength through vulnerability to our highest ideals and commitment to building our capacity for resiliency. Integrity is not simply a 'quality of character', but the practice of those who seek a higher quality of life together. And like all commitments, it happens a moment at a time.
In this way, being a Transformative Community Leader is the pursuit of one 'moment of integrity' at a time, and therefore a commitment to practice, rather than a credential or title to obtain.
Whether your pursuit of integrity takes you across the room or across the world, few things satisfy as deeply as living into the person you aspire to be, one moment at a time.
What moment of integrity is stirring in you? What goal seems out of reach, and yet won't let go of your imagination? Who is the person you dream of becoming? What is stopping you from becoming that person, one moment of integrity at a time?
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