It’s a common mantra in business, especially among the start up community. “Making it” generally involves achieving some sort of success—maybe it’s title, money, status, power, or all of the above. But usually I find that “making it” isn’t very well defined for most people.
And that applies to me too. As a 1.5 generation immigrant, “making it” is somehow wired to my brain. I can’t pin down why, even after years of talking about it with my wife, who has known me since high school. But I suspect that one of the reasons is because I am an immigrant and that the act of immigration is fundamentally for the purpose of creating a better life—in my family’s case, for better education and opportunities. And consequently, not “making it” diminishes the whole point of immigration and doing so in disregard for the huge risk that my family took in the act of immigration. Somehow by association, “making it” has also become synonymous with “appreciating my family’s sacrifices”.
So, what has this association driven me towards? Luckily, relatively positive outcomes. I have had well-paying jobs in investment banking and private equity, and those jobs in many (but not all) aspects, fit well with my interests and personality. Through those jobs, I met amazing colleagues (some becoming great friends and mentors) and moved to New York City, where my wife and I have had a great time so far. All in all, life is good.
But I still can’t help but feel like I am faking it. Faking what, that is a question I don’t have an answer to. But it also makes sense. With such an amorphous definition of “making it”, I am never going to have made it and so by definition, I am in a constant state of faking it (very meta?).
And there is a word that describes a person who is constantly faking it without never actually making it: a fraud. But fraud has a connotation of harming others (e.g., Elizabeth Holmes, founder of Theranos, wasting billions of dollars and really hurting some patients with her fake blood testing startup. There is a fascinating book about it that I recommend for anyone interested). But what I am doing isn’t harming anyone. Arguably, my family actually has benefited from my journey of faking it ‘till making it (and I’d like to think I worked at places that genuinely tried to do good and grow the economy).
For those of you who empathize with this sentiment, I have a better word to describe you and me—a “benevolent fraudster.” We will continue to be helpful to others while being a fraud—until we figure out what “making it” really means to each of us.