Who Are You?

I asked my significant other recently how would he identify himself. If he had to find a word to say, “I am this”, what would his ‘this’ be? It didn’t surprise me when he responded “an academic”. Even when I suggested that he’s also a father, brother, lover, gym-enthusiast, scientist, avid cyclist and insatiable reader, he felt that ‘an academic’ is the perfect definition of who he is.

It’s interesting to me that we could land on a single definition of who we are and be happy with it; that we would not only accept our interpretation of that definition, but also be comfortable with the assumptions other people make of that definition.

If you define yourself – your identity – as an academic, you intend to convey that you are an intellectual, a methodical thinker, a rational and sane individual who doesn’t jump to conclusions and only accepts evidence-based data. But you must also accept that people may consider you a bore, somewhat absent-minded, lacking in a wider world view, and a bit awkward socially. Until, of course, they discover that you are not.

It has always concerned me that what we do for a living and who we are as a person are inevitably intertwined, that to get to know you, people feel your job tells them a lot. But I disagree. I can see that it may make sense for certain vocations such as an academic, or an architect, or a doctor, or a dancer, or a teacher, or an artist. But where does that leave the rest of us? The accountants and secretaries and bus drivers and shop assistants and administrators and payroll officers and bankers and electricians and bricklayers and childcare workers and…?

Maybe we’d be better off defining ourselves by our passions? Am I writer, an Italian-speaker, an art-lover, a show-goer, a tango-dancer?

Many people define themselves by what they’ve been through – a divorcee, a cancer-survivor, an immigrant, a world-traveller, a solo-sailor.

Few of us have the fortune of having our passion and our work be one-in-the-same thing – most architects I know, live and breathe design, for example, even when they aren’t on the clock – but what if driving a bus is the last thing you want to think about when you’re not working?

The worst question to ask or be asked when you’re at a party is, “so, what do you do?” as if that could or should give anyone an insight into who someone is as a person. Certainly, “tell me about yourself, what do you like to do when you’re not at work” is a much more interesting conversation piece and allows us to explore the different things that make us who we are.

So, tell me, who are you? You may respond any number of ways, such as:

I’m a thinker and a drinker
A writer and a fighter
A mother and a lover
A singer and a swinger 

I’m a worrier and a warrior
A Cancerian and librarian
A professor and confessor
A maker and a faker 

I’m a seer and a believer
A woman and a footman
A reader and a screamer
A carer and a sharer

I’m an engineer and a mountaineer
A gambler and a rambler
A brother and a hugger
A pessimist and a therapist 

I’m a banker and a wanker
A dancer and financier
A better and jet setter
A big talker and a firewalker

I’m Italian and Australian
A smoker and a hoper
A snorer and a daughter
A cancer survivor and lorry truck driver 

I’m an immigrant but not ignorant
Careful but not fearful
Learning but still yearning
Healing but still reeling

I am more than what you see
And more than what I do
My work cannot define me
Nor should you expect it to