Our own Jeff Pulver recently spoke at the 140 Character Conference in Des Moines Iowa, held on April 23, 2012. In some ways these reflections on the nature of identity, life, and social media can be viewed as an elaboration of his presentation delivered a week earlier at Syracuse University. In any event, Jeff’s comments, exhibiting as always a subtle yet powerful authority born of life’s long experience and free from pretentious, rhetorical artifice, echoes Polonius’ advice to his son Laertes in Shakespeare’s Hamlet: “This above all: to thine own self be true.”

Jeff Pulver: Everyone sees life differently. I certainly see life differently than others do. I’m Jeff Pulver. Some of you know me, and my uncle, Jerry, who is here. He made it here all the way from where he lives, Winnemucca, Nevada. There are few others of you here who know me, but I’ll argue that, really, no one really ‘knows’ me. In fact, no one really knows you either. The ‘you’ that you’re willing to share may not be the ‘you’ who you are. There are different ‘you’s’ here, even if you are same person—and I’m not talking about anyone with mental ‘issues’ [Laughter.] I’m talking about people who are just being people, who you have a chance to connect to.

It’s funny. When you go to college—if you go to college—people tell you can start a new identity, that you can be someone who you weren’t in high school. That’s true for the first day of college, maybe the second day. [Laughter.] But unless you truly are polymorphic, it’s very hard for you to be the ideal person who you are not. Then again, maybe you have a chance to simply become the person who you really are. I like the words ‘simply become who you are.’ Some people spend their entire lives not knowing who they are. Some people spend all their lives trying to figure out who they want to be, but they spend so much time trying to be somebody else, they never have a chance to be themselves. That’s hard.

One of the interesting things regarding the world of social is that you can be somebody who you want to be, or you can be somebody who you think your friends want you to be. But at the end of the day, are you really you? Are you connecting to the person who you are? Are you true to yourself? If you tweeted to yourself, would you talk back? [Laughter.] Would you ‘friend’ yourself on Twitter? What’s up with ‘poking’ yourself? Oh, that’s something else. [Laughter.]

But when you get down to it, we have a chance to be raw and to be real, if you let yourself be. But it’s really hard to be real. It’s really hard to be true to yourself. We can joke about it. You can make fun of others. But at the end of the day, you have a chance to have a channel that’s you. And it doesn’t matter about technology. It’s all about people. It’s all about how you want to be: How you want to be understood. How you want to be remembered. It’s all about how you want to be who you are, or give yourself a chance to connect to be that person who you are. Because, again, no one really knows you. Not your parents, not your sisters, not your brothers, not your friends. Sometimes even you don’t know you.

As a result, ‘social’ gets to be very confusing, because if for the first time you want to be honest with yourself, and you come out in Facebook or Twitter and say something which is real and genuine but people don’t think it’s ‘you’ because you’re not the kind of person who normally says such things—well, how do they know this? And how do you know where you fit in? How do you know where you are to be in the world? It’s so hard to be adaptive to environments which are otherwise hostile. It’s hard just to grow up. It’s hard to be an adult.

Is see that some students came here today. Are you guys in college or high school? Ah, seniors in high school, so your average age is 17 or 18. Alright, so one thing people will probably never tell you is that you never have to worry about getting old. Right? The thing is, when you’re 18 to 38 years old, you’re still the same person. The skin on your outside may get a little harder, but your soul is your soul. And the voices that gave you direction when you were 18 years old hopefully will still be giving you direction when you’re 68 or 78. It’s the same thing. It’s just that the context of living changes. But you are who you are.

So, if you get nothing else out of this conference, just remember that you’re never going to get ‘old.’ But sometimes you have to learn to listen to yourself, to the voices that guide you through life. Sometimes the challenge is trying to understand who those voices are and appreciate what they’re saying.

Life is like taking a multiple-choice test. Let’s say that, arguably, you answer ‘C’ to a question. Then, you have second thoughts. You come back and change your answer to ‘B’. But it turns out that ‘C’ was right all along. And you knew it was right, dammit. But your brain stepped in and ‘overthought’ it, or maybe it was a question with emotional impact, and you ‘overfelt’ it. But something about your soul gave you the right direction, at least initially. And you spend the rest of your life trying to figure out how to get connected back to the thing that was trying to steer you in the right direction, because it seems that your soul knows what to do.

One of the most interesting things I’ve ever discovered about having friends is that they don’t have a clue as to who I really am. Even today. And that has made me sad. But it’s true. Even so, I refuse to pretend to be anybody other than who I am. And I refuse to be who they want me to be. I want to be who I want to be. I’m willing to be fickle. I’m willing to be—crazy. I’m willing to do what I want to do to have fun today, because if I’m not here, I can’t have fun.

My father told me several things before he died. One of the things he said, relevant to the adults in the audience here today, is that a vacation with your family is no vacation at all. [Laughter.] It’s not for the kids. But another thing he said was really a lament that ‘youth is wasted on the young.’ I think that’s true too. And when you get older, your parents actually seem wiser than they ever were. That’s also true, guys, but you’ll figure that out later. [Laughter.]

The thing is, you all have the chance to live and do whatever it is you want to do. It doesn’t matter what your age is. That’s all relative. You have to give yourself a chance to be honest, if with no one else in the world, then at least with yourself, as to who you are. Allow yourself to be centered, at least enough to connect, and to feel.

The world of social is kind of hard, because on one level you’re trying to create an identity which is the ‘me’ that people think they are. Then there’s the ‘me’ I really am today or the ‘me’ I want to be tomorrow. That creates so much confusion. How could you not be the same person? What about authenticity? What about ‘realness’? At the end of the day, you’re a human being. We have feelings. Kids have feelings. In fact, many people don’t remember the importance of feelings. But we have them. And sometimes those feelings never go away. It’s hard to be who you are, to be connected and still be ‘real.’ Social has all sorts of aspects, but for me, social media today is such that it’s nice to have open communication with people that know me, or think they know me. But what’s really nice is to see that the whole world is connecting and communicating, because I think that, as society grows, humanity is on the rise for one reason only—we have new and open lines of communication with each other. We’re able, in this room today, to find common ground with strangers. We’re able to realize that, once and for all, we’re all in it together, whether we like it or not.

We can’t always solve our problems, but we can agree to disagree and we can agree to agree. We can agree to be fools and we can agree to be friends, and we can do it with a smile. There’s no need to do it with hatred. You can be strongly opinionated. You’re allowed to be who you are, because you’re a person and your voice matters. This is the hardest part of the matter. So many people grow up in a world where they have to repress their voice. And I’m not talking about totalitarian regimes. I’m talking about here in America, where you’re not allowed to speak up because you may offend somebody—well, maybe I shouldn’t say that! [Laughter.] But you’re allowed to have a voice, because your voice really matters.

We’re living in a time right now where I question our ability to have freedom, because freedom sometimes comes from the inside. I’m just talking about giving yourself a chance to be you. Discover the brilliance, the beauty, the effervescence of you. And social is very scary in that regard. As a kid growing up on long Island, I could tell, very quickly, that I was alone. Really alone. So much so that I found my ‘soulness’ in the craziness of radio. When I was a 9-year-old kid I had no friends, no real friends, or maybe I just didn’t feel the friendship, even if they were there superficially. So I discovered AM radio at night. I used to listen to the AM dial. Frankly, last night I was here in Iowa and I was very happy to tune in some AM stations and see what was coming in here from New York. It was nice.

In any case, when I was a kid I went to my uncle’s Fred’s office. My Dad told me to check it out. So I ended up having the opportunity to have a really surreal experience. I had no idea as a kid why I was in my uncle’s office. There I was, and he turns on this box on his desk, and it made some noise. It made some squeals. And, at the end of the day, it all changed my life, because this box was a radio and many voices coming out of it. My uncle tuned the dial a little bit and he found a clear spot. He said something that was very hard for me to understand. He said, ‘CQ, CQ. This is K2QQM calling CQ.’ He said it again. What he didn’t tell me is that he had a ham radio; he assumed that I knew. ‘CQ’ comes from Morse Code. It means ‘seeking you.’

Every day, I go out on Twitter, and I tweet ‘Good morning.’ That’s the equivalent of me saying ‘CQ’ with a ham radio. Every day I’m out there looking for a meaningful relationship, a meaningful contact, a chance to say, ‘Hey, I’m alive and you matter too.’ But we really don’t have an easy way to do that. As a kid, however, I started to learn. I started to understand. I could say ‘CQ’ too just like my uncle. Standing there in my uncle’s office, for an entire hour I was mesmerized as he talked to random strangers from all over the world. He said, ‘My name is Fred. I’m in Farmingdale, New York,’ and he gave a report.

After the hour had passed, I looked at my uncle, then I looked at his desk and the ham radio atop it. I realized then that my uncle had the cure for loneliness. It was this box, this ham radio. I could simply take this box and bring it back to my bedroom at home, and then I’d always have friends. I’d never be alone. I tried to take the radio home with me, but he wouldn’t let me. You see, that was his radio. [Laughter.] Moreover, to be a 9-year-old ham radio operator was not so easy. I needed to get a license. I actually needed to learn Morse Code, of all things. Can you imagine? I had to learn about electronic theory normally taught at the college level. And I had to learn about the rules and regulations governing ham radio. It took me until I was 12-and-a-half years old. It was a struggle, because I was studying for and taking tests to become a full-fledged ham radio operator.

So my life from 9 to 12-and-a-half years of age really sucked. [Laughter.] I was trying to be me. I was having a hard time connecting. A really hard time. But then I ended up getting a ham radio license when I was 12-and-a-half, and I’ve never shut up since. [Laughter.]

As a kid, the thing I learned from the whole experience was that radio was a great platform, a great preparation for the future of social media. Why? Because if you’re a 12-year-old kid on Long Island in New York, and you’re not listening, connecting, sharing or engaging with a stranger on the radio, they’re not going to talk back to you. You have no standing with them whatsoever. But if you have the ability to let yourself be a little vulnerable, let yourself feel something, maybe for the first time, and feel someone else’s feelings, then it opens you up to a whole world out there. And then, whether or not everyone is a phony or fake doesn’t matter, because it is you who is real. I make this a point: everyone has a need to feel liked—more than merely ‘Facebook liked’. Everyone desires to feel needed. Sometimes you don’t get that from the outside world, so you have to find it on the inside. And that’s really hard.

Social networks do give you that chance to feel good. I believe that if you feel something, go ahead and feel it, say it, experience it. Don’t put it off until tomorrow. Tomorrow may not happen.

I ended up become a ham operator, becoming a bit obsessed with it, which got me involved, 20 years later, with the Internet. My life was actually saved because I was a ham operator, for in 1995 some software appeared that enabled me to talk over the Internet. I cheered, ‘Yea! My hobby is back!’ IT was like ham radio, but now I could talk over the Internet. It was voice over IP. Well, I got fired from my day job because I got so involved with that. I didn’t know what to do about it. It was hard. But I discovered that it was okay to be fired, because it can save your life. Consider this: I had worked for Cantor Fitzgerald at the World Trade Center. Yes, I worked at One World Trade. About 700 Cantor Fitzgerald employees lost their lives on 9/11. I was spared because I was a ham operator. I discovered that the person sitting next to you really can change your life if you let them. You just have to give yourself a chance to feel and connect with others.

I’ll end this talk on a point about ‘digital breadcrumbs.’ You see, the thing that is going to define the life of an 18-year-old that doesn’t define the life of a 48-year-old person is that, for the next 30 years, the 18-year-old has a chance to be remembered because of the technology. You see, in my generation, if wanted to be a rock star, you had to be a real rock star. But today the world’s media cares about and notes everything that you do, for whatever reason. Legacy is not something you ask for, it’s something that comes with the territory. Imagine growing up right now. Unless you are a major celebrity, there’s not a lot written about you—certainly not anything your future family and descendants will ever see. But today, we’re also in a world that gives us Instagram, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and everything else. I think an absolute other side of the argument about Twitter and about status updates is that if you’re alive, then your voice really matters. After all, when you’re dead, it’s hard to tweet! [Laughter.] When you’re alive, and you have something to say, say it. What you don’t realize is that you are in a sense talking to your future kids or grandchildren, who you may never meet. You have a chance today to live a life and for others in the future to understand it by looking at your timelines, tweets, Instagrams, YouTube videos and videos that people had created for you to view too.

In the not-too-distant future, your life will be documented, whether you like it or not. You don’t have to be on a reality TV show. You just have to be alive. Can you image the impact that you will have on others? So, if you’re having a shitty day, say it! Because someone else, a future descendant of yours, may have a bad day too and could be helped by viewing what you say today. Why should they feel all alone just because they are having a bad day? Life doesn’t have to be great. Sometimes it sucks. But it’s life. We choose that over the alternative.

And so, to the extent that you have the opportunity to leave digital breadcrumbs wherever you go, leave them! But don’t be overexposed in terms of privacy. Privacy matters. I’m not saying you should put yourself in harm’s way. But remember—you’re alive. Live your life. Follow your dreams. Inspire others—because you can.

I’m @jeffpulver, and thank you for listening. Stand up and give your friend a hug, please!

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Richard Grigonis (@EditStateofNow) is Editor-in-Chief of Jeff Pulver’s State of NOW / #140conf community website.