Fighting The Impulse or, Working Make Believe, 2
Thursday, February 5, 2009 at 07:50AM At age nineteen, I took a year off of college and climbed full time. It was great, for most of the time. Actually, it was great when I was around other full-time climbers. When I was around people in real life, however, it was horrifically uncomfortable.
Tioga Pass, May, 1997. I’m sitting at the family-style dinner table with my boyfriend and six strangers. What’s your name? We all asked each other. What do you do?
Around the table we went: there were teachers, engineers, artists and even one aviation safety specialist. When it was his turn, my boyfriend said, proudly, mountain guide. When it was my turn, I asked for more mashed potatoes.
That was almost twelve years ago, but I can still remember wanting, equally, to tell everyone to shove it, and to lie and say I was a mountain guide, too.
Back then I thought being a guide was better than being a brain surgeon. I so desperately wanted that identity that I would I get angry at my boyfriend for already being one.
Now I know that what I really wanted was a purposeful statement of identity.
My sister is a full time mom with a Masters in Public Health. A year ago, when her kids were two and four, she decided to get feisty at dinner parties. When people asked her what she did, she answered them with statements like I am a passionate runner, I seek out the best tofu, I enjoy learning about food anthropology. "Why is it," she said to me at the time, "that people can’t talk about what they are interested in? Would it be that hard?"
As humans, we want to organize ourselves and others into categories. One statement—I am an accountant, says so much. Or at least it does so in our brains. We immediately assign a host of personality traits and choices to that statement. If, on the other side of it, we try to skirt the question, or even worse, launch into a five minute diatribe about our exasperation with the continued quantification and qualification of others vis a vis their profession, we will likely be labeled “that freak at the party the other night.”
I no longer want to be the mountain guide in every conversation. But I would be lying if I said I don’t pull out that identity card when I know it will matter. Other times I pick a different profession. I seem to have four of them, these days. Maybe that makes me lucky. But it doesn’t solve the issue. Ben, writing into my last post, summed it up with this comment: Does who I am match what I do?
We are told in modern spirituality that true happiness comes from being at peace with ourselves. Sure. Fine. But we are constantly describing ourselves to others. Maybe that is the constant trick of ego. Maybe I’d be a better person if I could be blissfully zen about it all. But I’m not. The questions provide times to claim ourselves, to reinvent ourselves, to connect with others. Or that’s what they should do in the best of contexts. But maybe to do that, we need a follow up question.
Last week I was at an impromptu dinner with a group of people, half of whom I did not know. I turned to the woman next to me. What’s your name? I asked. What do you do? And then I stopped her mid- answer. “No, wait,” I said, “Surprise me.”
She arched her eyebrow. I could feel myself becoming that freaky woman.
“Ok,” I said. “Tell me what you do. But then tell me more.”
Reader Comments (8)
Maybe, who you are is how you are being during what you do. If you are inspirational and humorous, lighthearted and kind while you do your accountant paperwork, that will speak louder than the paperwork. If you are a bitch and grumpy and a complainer while you are a mountain guide, mountain guiding will no longer be defining you they way you want it to. (Not saying you are ANY of those things, just hypothetical here.) FOr me, I try to think that who I am is inspirational. Period. then it doesn't matter what my job title of the day is. (and you know it fluctuates more than than the specials menu at Starbucks). it matches everything; personal trainer, writer, musician, whatever. Anywho, thanks for some good morning reflection!!!
Poet Mary Oliver writes,"This is the first, wildest, and wisest thing I know, that the soul exists, and that it is built entirely out of attention."
Where does (or should) this soul tending "attention" originate? From others? From self? From work?
In this nutball culture, maybe we take it where we can get it...A look of admiration (or even acknowledgement) from others at the dinner party when we tell them what we "do" (attention from others), choosing for myself to sit at this computer, drink more coffee, and respond to a blog because I want to (attention from self), successfully guiding a client, publishing an article, or living an adventure (attention from work).
Maybe where all this attention intersects is where balance, purpose, identity, and integrity in what we DO is found
(or lost?).
OR, maybe it's a whole lot simpler.
I asked some of the kids in my fourth grade class,"what do you do?"
Some of their answers:
"Do you mean at home or at school?"
"When?"
"With who?"
"I do pretty good."
And, the best one: "That ain't a specific question. You should ask, 'What are you doing right now?'"
I have been having an identity crisis lately. It's very stressful but also very fun. I have recently enjoyed identifying myself with people with Asperger's. It allows me to explain my social ineptness and makes people think I am actually really smart even though I say things like, "I am hungry. Where is the glue?"
Good post. It is one of those age-old and essentially useless questions we're pressed into asking when making small talk. I lived in Italy for a while, where the question, along with "How's it going?", is considered quite rude to ask someone you've only just met. It could be a translation issue. In Italian, "What do you do?" is the same as "What are you doing?" -- "Che fai?"
Basically, the key is avoid small talk, hence this odious question. But that involves never leaving the house, which probably only works for me and a few other people, most of them writing manifestos in shacks in the deepest woods.
Such a great post. Thank you. I quit my job last summer and have been doing a myriad of random things since that only occasionally produce a paycheck so far. I love it yet dread the "so, what do you do?" question. And am horrified to hear those words come out of my mouth as well... yet they creep up habitually as a way to relate and spark conversation. It's what we're taught in our culture.
I am trying to discover my passions and identity and find it amazingly and surprisingly hard to do without a 'defined' career path. Thank you for expressing what I (and I suspect many others) feel and struggle with. And I love the idea of getting creative with your questions and answers. :)
Attention as an option of the senses. Belief that we can all get beyond these questions and into something deeper. Never leaving the house. Perhaps this is the solution within itself? That sense that everyone can have that conversation if they find the right people with whom to have it? The kids, in Ben's post, might have it the best. But then, we can't be the kids. That's what happens when the Montessori kids grow up and try to leave the house. They realize, as do we all, that we have to try beyond the bubble. Living in Boulder these past years I have thought the location was the bubble. Now I think it might just have been the state of mind. Can you burst your own bubble? Should we? Does it make us more human? Maybe it gives us more community. That, I will take.
"Ask me whether what I have done is my life."
William Stafford ("Ask Me") serves up a bit of bubble bursting "fun." These words, for me, nuke the bubble, then quickly usher in some intense vulnerability!
I guess, questions that pull away the insulation (or bubble) between the outer and inner self might just make us more human...or humble. If nothing else, they might guide a renewing search for vocation.
I read once that the word vocation is rooted in the latin word for "voice." So, another question, "how do you listen for it?"
Disquieting as it may be, this sense of "voice" redefines statement of identity from a goal driven pursuit into a more...intuitive state of being.
its a good story !!
loveisintheair