The Importance of Authenticity: On the Eclipse, Tom Skilling, and Being Oneself

BY ANDREW MORKES, FOUNDER AND AUTHOR OF NATURE IN CHICAGOLAND

Hopping up on my soapbox…

We live in a world of Auto-Tune, Pollyannaish social media posts, and Z-list celebrities. A world that’s loaded with people looking the same, acting the same, and often thinking the same (lump me in there at times). Of reality TV- and social media-manufactured controversies and edginess. We crave authenticity, but we’re surrounded by cultural complicity. Most popular media is meant to be safe. To entertain slightly, to titillate mildly, to provide us with Brave New World soma that keeps us entertained, but not informed, in the post-truth era. (Some media also exists to stir us up—often in the absence of hard facts—but that’s a post for another time.)

Some of our broadcasters are good examples of this complicity and sameness. If you turn on many of your local news stations (I exclude our local PBS stations and a few other broadcasters from this category), you’ll get the same rote reading of murder, mayhem, trump-tweets, and water-skiing squirrels by anchors with their market-tested hair, body size, and delivery. Rarely (WGN morning news in Chicago excluded) will you get any glimmer of humanity (and real-world crankiness and honesty) or the essential energies that makes us different, feel alive, and feel that something is at stake.

And then came the full eclipse last Monday and uber-weatherman Tom Skilling’s moment of sheer humanity before the camera. As the sky darkened in southern Illinois Monday afternoon, he stopped being a reporter and became an everyman—or woman—caught up in the sheer beauty of day becoming night in a moment, a black circle where there was once blinding sunlight. In two-and-a-half minutes of totality, the temperature plunged, birds suddenly roosted, and Venus, Jupiter, Mars and Mercury and the brightest stars became visible in what was once blue sky. Onlookers glimpsed the sun’s corona, the diamond ring effect, and Baily’s beads. A primal experience where the safe world we knew was flipped on its axis for a few minutes.

Skilling high-fived and hugged a surprised woman. “Look at that, wow!” he repeated. He cried. He emoted. He hugged more people. He was a human being caught up, marveling, and being humbled by a rare celestial moment, and it felt good to watch. It felt great to watch.

Tom Skilling is the antithesis of the typical broadcaster. I love that he loves meteorology so much. I love that he gushes about pneumonia fronts, cumulonimbus clouds, and the Enhanced-Fujita Scale. I love that he was so caught up in the moment that he risked jeers at his tears as he watched something beautiful and profound.

I wish I was more Skilling-like in touting my love of good writing, elegantly-placed commas, and almighty alliteration. Tears might be weird as I proclaim my love of writing, reading, and books (but maybe not), but being even more enthusiastic about something we care about deeply must be a good thing. We all need to be more like Skilling—so comfortable with ourselves in our nerdiness (and I’m a nerd, too) that we become free of the tedious sameness and safeness that many of us are immersed in daily. I’m not advocating a daily cry-fest, because that would become inauthentic in a matter of a few hard cries, but I hope that we can embrace the unexpected, the emotional, the strange when it feels right. Tom Skilling has mastered it. Why not the rest of us?

Copyright (text) Andrew Morkes; photo courtesy of Aubrey Gemignani, NASA

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ABOUT ANDREW MORKES

I have been a writer and editor for more than 25 years. I’m the founder of College & Career Press (2002); the editorial director of the CAM Report career newsletter and College Spotlight newsletter; the author and publisher of “The Morkes Report: College and Career Planning Trends” blog; and the author and publisher of Hot Health Care Careers: 30 Occupations With Fast Growth and Many New Job Openings; Nontraditional Careers for Women and Men: More Than 30 Great Jobs for Women and Men With Apprenticeships Through PhDs; They Teach That in College!?: A Resource Guide to More Than 100 Interesting College Majors, which was selected as one of the best books of the year by the library journal Voice of Youth Advocates; and other titles. They Teach That in College!? provides more information on environmental- and sustainability-related majors such as Ecotourism, Range Management, Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Built Environment, Sustainability Studies, and Sustainable Agriculture/Organic Farming. I’m also a member of the parent advisory board at my son’s school.

In addition to these publications, I’ve written more than 40 books about careers for other publishing and media companies including Infobase (such as the venerable Encyclopedia of Careers & Vocational Guidance, the Vault Career Guide to Accounting, and many volumes in the Careers in Focus, Discovering Careers, What Can I Do Now?!, and Career Skills Library series) and Mason Crest (including those in the Careers in the Building Trades and Cool Careers in Science series).