What Are You?

Note: Originally posted here on August 26, 2019.

You. Not me. You. What are you?

What. Not who. I believe whole-heartedly that “who” anyone is is made up of a lot more than just a name, just an activity, just a job or career, just a relationship status, just any one thing. They all join together to create the more complete “who” we are and no simple description is enough to explain that.

So what I want to know–or, if you aren’t inclined to tell me, at least what I think we should each spend some time thinking about for ourselves–is what you are.

For instance, I’m a writer. That’s not who I am, or at least not all of who I am, but it’s one thing that I am.

But I’ve never made money by writing. Well, that’s not entirely true. I published two poems and a story story in a Christian teen Sunday school magazine in high school that I got paid a little for. But in my adult life, as someone who holds a writing degree, I do not make money on my writing. I’ve submitted only a small handful of stories or articles to potential publications, and never had my submissions accepted. One of these days, I’ll probably post one of my favorites on this blog, because while I may never have found the right publication home for it, I still know it’s a good story.

At any rate, my point is, I’m a writer. Not because I have a blog. Not because I have some best-seller. (Yet.) No, I’m a writer because . . . I write.

(Now I digress. But with purpose. I promise.)

In my current class that I just started, we had to watch a YouTube video (it’s longish but here’s the link if anyone is interested) about the role of business, and the goals beyond, and more important than, the bottom line. The speaker said that people are more interested in business if they have a greater motivating factor than just “to make money,” because that’s not really that important to us in and of itself. Extrinsic value is good but we need intrinsic value as well.

My children frequently ask me why I have to go to work. (Especially in the summer or other days when they don’t have to be at school.) I tell them it’s because I need to make money to keep a roof over our heads and food in the pantry and fridge, and gas in the car, and clothes on our bodies. And for a 7-year-old and a 4-year-old that’s about as philosophical a reason as they’re ready for yet, but there are other reasons. Of course there are.

I really enjoy my job. I enjoy stitching. I enjoy the fast-paced environment. I love my coworkers. It may not be what I see myself doing for the rest of my life, but it’s a job I enjoy. What’s more, though, I am proud of what the company I work for has accomplished, building a factory in a low-income area of a low-population part of one of the ten lowest-populated states.

(Note: I have no current statistic for this and a quick internet search for it yielded no useable results, but I’m basing this on research I did for fun (read: procrastinating on homework) during college. I went through an atlas finding where each state fell in order of population, then in order of land area, then in order of population per land area. My was somewhere around 40th or 41st no matter which way you looked at it. I’m assuming that hasn’t significantly changed in the past decade.)

I am proud to be part of a company that seeks to build a family out of the employees and foster a sense of pride in our own abilities. I am proud to be part of a company that doesn’t look at this little area and say, “Nothing big is sustainable here,” but rather, looks and says, “Here is where we need to be, how do we make it sustainable?”

At work, I am a stitcher, but I am so much more, even there. My coworkers and I are all called to be innovators. We are all called to be leaders, even those of us not in leadership positions. We are a new wave of pioneers, not forging an original path, but bushwhacking our way through to rediscover a path that our state kept well maintained, but that has since become severely overgrown.

Coming to my point now. No, really.

So what does all this about the greater purpose of business have to do with what you are? I used writing as an example of what I am. What else am I? I’m a musician: a clarinetist, a singer, a budding autoharpist. I occasionally play my clarinet or sing in church, but otherwise do not currently use those in any musical groups or performance settings. But I am those things, because I play the clarinet, because I sing, because (when I have time, which is rare right now) I practice and work on learning the autoharp.

I am an artist. I paint. I draw. I create. I rarely show these things to others because I know I’m not the best artist in the world, not even a particularly great one. Decent at best. But I do it. I do it because I love it. And these are important.

I have always had these thoughts, always debated this with others. It was a frequent topic of conversation in college, in fact. Are we truly writers if we don’t publish? What is required to be a writer? One thing I particularly liked (which unfortunately I no longer know the source of) basically said that, while you cannot be a good writer if you never take time to live life and gather life experiences, taking that time itself does not make you a writer, nor does planning stories, or any of the other trappings surrounding writing. In fact, you are not a writer unless you write.

So on strength of such thoughts, I’ve always associated this with the things typically called more “right-brained” or more “creative.” But…

(Are you ready? This is my actual point!)

The older I’ve gotten the more convinced I am that what you are has little or nothing to do with career or professionalism. It has everything to do with your heart and what you choose to do. A person is an engineer if they engineer something. A person is a mathematician if they solve mathematical equations. A person is an historian if they study history.

Now, PLEASE don’t misunderstand me. I’m not saying I think anyone can declare themselves to be something and just BE that thing. If that were true, I’d declare myself a multimillionaire right now and be done with it. Notice that all these whats that someone might be require, not just declaring it, but doing it. Similarly, just doing it does not mean one will be professionally successful at it, or even personally successful at it. Unfortunately, being something doesn’t always mean being good at something. But if any of the whats that together make up the who that is you are things you can’t use to support yourself or your family, that’s okay. Your value does not have to be in how you make money to support yourself.

One of my writing teachers in college once said, “Sometimes you have to take another job to support your writing.” I think that’s true of many whats. Sometimes we have to use our work, not just to have money for the very baseline needs of life as I so often tell my children, but to support parts of who we are. Otherwise we become an empty shell of someone working to sustain survival, but not really living all of what we really are.

Go do your what, and have a great week.