Your permanent record.

My first time might have been in Ms. Gillis’ third grade English class.

“If you don’t do well on this test, it will be on your permanent record. You might not get into X in high school.”

I had no idea what X was. But it sounded important.

From then on, there was in image in my mind:

A file-drawer. A file. My name. Some things written in it. Bad things.

And it stuck. In Junior High it became sports and grades, in High School it was all of the above plus activities and status and then in College the thing got out of control and became the whole shebang.

It. Was. All. Permanent.

No room for error. Mistakes were a stain.

Then came the Internet. And Blogging. And Twitter. And Medium.

And a lot of life happened. The details of whatever X was back in the day surely don’t matter, and neither do the high school things, or even college ones, but surely the recent things do. Don’t they?

But the tweets. They remain. Surely?

I get that feeling sometimes when I’m about to send a tweet that touches on a controversial topic like race or politics or the markets: that feeling of X.

Of my permanent record.

Friends often serve as a test — does this tweet look ok? This Instagram?

Thank you medium for the collaboration feature. Does this sound OK?

But the truth is: None of you care enough for it to actually matter.

There are so many voices of so many people out there that whatever words I might tweet or write or say are tiny. Minuscule.

They are a drop in an infinite ocean of moments that we increasingly share with one another and the world.

The beauty of SnapChat is not that the Mr. Weiner can avoid the limelight next time, it is that nobody cares that much about whatever moment you shared yesterday because there are so many more awesome moments to share today.

And while on the one hand, maybe that makes each tweet less meaningful, each post less important, each photo less memorable.

On the other hand, it is liberating.

We can speak more freely.

Share more often. More openly. More honestly.

Because in accepting our smallness, we embrace our own uniqueness.

By realizing that no one cares enough to dig up a tweet from 4 years, 2 months, 3 hours, 3 minutes and 6 seconds ago, we begin to realize that in a moment they will scroll by this one, never to return again.

Maybe through this process we continue to share more of ourselves and continue to recognize the common humanity that unites us.

Last night I was watching Girls, and for a moment, I cringed as Lena Dunham swapped shirts with a guy in the middle of a dance club.

But then I realized — that is exactly why we love her.

She totally gets the nobody-cares-so-live-your-heart-out truth of life.

And somehow, by living that brutally honest existence for all of us to see, we end up caring even more.

But for Lena, her permanent record is a tune we all want to dance our brains out to as we watch her scream it out loud.

Well, if you want to sing out, sing out
And if you want to be free, be free
‘cause there’s a million things to be
You know that there are

And if you want to live high, live high
And if you want to live low, live low
‘cause there’s a million ways to go
You know that there are

Your Permanent Record? Hah!

What will you tweet next?

But wait.

Isn’t there some trick?

I mean, Cory Booker just won the Democratic primary for a New Jersey senate seat, and Ted Cruz is being bandied about as a potential front-runner for the GOP presidential ticket because of their records right?

And what about the CEO’s of public companies? Civil rights activists?

How is it that leaders can be leaders and also recognize they are free to be themselves at the same time? Are they just obsessed with X?

They don’t seem like it.

They seem to have the kind of charisma we admire in artists.

Why do some people seem to act so magnetically free, and yet with so much integrity at the same time?

Writing about religion and swapping shirts on a dance floor in the same medium post is liable to get me booted from the Internet, but given my newfound not-caring-what-you-think what do I have to lose?

I think this is where genuine belief might enter the equation.

In a similar way that we admire Lena Dunham for the integrity with which she lives her genuine not-believing-in-anything-ness:

People who shake hands with Barack Obama feel that he genuinely cares about them like they are the only person in the room; and people who know Mitt Romney personally know him to be man who cares deeply about his family, his faith and his community.

The thing is, although our childhood fears of X and a Permanent Record in a filing cabinet are unfounded:

There is another permanent record we create with the way we act in the world everyday. This one is more personal.

In the same way that Lena sings her own tune with her Art, so many people craft their own stories with the hard work of doing what they believe in everyday, not because anyone cares, but because it is the thing they believe in.

And it is through this honest hard work with integrity that true leadership begins to blossom.

Here the dance is not as much headbanging as it is Mozart.

The craft of a life pursuing a mission or passion of meaning beyond oneself takes on hues of many different colors, yet somehow each is universally recognizable.

Invoking ideas like God or a higher power to explain the inspiration or meaning for why these paths resonate stokes flames in these edges of the webs, but such an idea seems reasonable.

Plausible. Believable.

How else do we have that inner voice calling us? Who else is that person who really cares about every word we say?

It isn’t you for whom we write the words or tweet the tweets.

At the end of the day, the permanent record we create is the one we live within our quietest moments when no one is looking.

And it is through listening to that inner calling that the outer aspects of an admirable life shine through despite stones that are easily cast.

So perhaps we are left somewhere in between.

Aiming for “being the change we want to see in the world” but not out of fear of our Permanent Record or from some desire for X,

but through pursuit of our own inner calling.

By listening to that voice inside. By following our heart.

There’s nothing you can do that can’t be done
Nothing you can sing that can’t be sung
Nothing you can say, but you can learn how to play the game
It’s easy!

Nothing you can make that can’t be made
No one you can save that can’t be saved
Nothing you can do, but you can learn how to be you in time
It’s easy!

Nothing you can know that isn’t known
Nothing you can see that isn’t shown
Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you were meant to be
It’s easy!

All you need is Love
Love is all you need.

So yes. Permanent Record.

And yes. You get to sing it.

But yes. Sing it in your own voice. From the heart. Because although no one will read these words or your tweets, you will.

So sing it in a voice that resonates within.