Tuesday, April 17, 2007

On Defining Who I Am By My Occupation


We just got back from a remarkable networking lunch where fifty movers and shakers in spirituality and media chatted each other up. (What I personally move and shake is confidential and not pretty.) As we met in various groups the conversation primarily consisted of each of us in a round telling the others "what we do." There was no instructions on this at all; this conversation is the default setting for networking. It would seem we are what we do for a living. For most of the folks this was relevant since most of us came to do what we do through an arduous and intentional process---education combined with job choices within our scope/s of interest.

Still, the short hand of summing up who I am, or any of us for that matter, by the naming of an occupation was very disturbing to me. The truth is what we do as a job often does not define us. Further, being stereotyped by our occupation denies the process of life. I have done lots of jobs over the years from paper boy to sales to waiter to writer to pastor to attorney to Deputy Attorney General. Not one of those titles begin to describe who I am, yet each one of those jobs are integrated into my life path. The question perhaps is, "are you a tadpole or a frog?" The answer is I may look like a tadpole, yet I am in the process of becoming something different than what I appear to be today. Not that being a tadpole is bad---embrace that too---yet don't marginalize me because of the stage I am in within the process of life.

I found it hard to give a quick summary of who I am. The titles I have worn over the years sound cool in shorthand, yet it's disconcerting to be quickly thrown into a cubby hole of what each other person thought regarding that title. I became not me, but rather a caricature of the other people the hearer knows within that stated profession. The other side is that if I honestly state who I am it sounds pretentious as hell since I identify not as who I am today, but rather, I am beyond the tadpole, beyond the frog, even beyond the young prince, and see myself as a king. See, I told you---pretentious---yet I can not dwell on my apparent frogdom when it is already the season to consider my kingdom.

I am not who you think I am, whatever that may be; I am more, much more, than even I realize.

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