A while ago, I watched an episode of My Family. Really funny (my type of humour at least). The husband was really getting frustrated with the wife (as usual). But he blurted out to her “We are not human doings, we are human beings, so just be……”
How do we value ourselves? mostly what I hear and see is, we place an awful amount of emphasis on what we do. I will not speak for all people here, but that does seem to be the trend these days.
As much as the Guy in the sitcom said it in jest, I really think there is a lot of truth in his statement. We are human beings. What does that mean to us though?
Does it mean when people ask what am I, I do not answer with “I am a Sound Engineer”?
I always say, I am a human being. That is who I am, this defines what I do and not the other way around.
The trouble with finding one’s value in what we do, is that what happens the day you lose a job? What happens the day you fail at the thing you pursued? What happens when we put our foot in it?
Do we then call ourselves losers, failures, etc?????
No the reality should be that we are who we are and that defines what we do….
theHonestone
You’re so right. I remember reading about a Professor in the USA who gave a standard assignment to all his first-year students. They were to go to a busy street, approach strangers walking briskly to work and ask: ‘Who are you?’ He points out that the answers are usually the same: ‘I am a lawyer’, ‘I am a secretary’, ‘I am a clerk in that building over there’. The point he makes is that modern people in cities define themselves by what they do, rather than by who they are. They think of themselves in utilitarian terms, in other words. Unemployment, or the threat of losing one’s job, becomes not just an economic crisis for such people, but one of identity.
Unfortunately the identity issue is a big one these days. Little wonder we such an unhappy society…
Identity issues are tough to nail down, and often defy definition – at least for me. I remember a time when what I did was so much a part of who I am that I was an editor before I was a human being. I lived and breathed that job like air, drank in its details like water. And very nearly asphyxiated and drowned when I had to move on to other – better – things. I don’t regret that. I think it contributed to my humanity, to my concept of vulnerability and growth. Maybe there is a time, for all of us, when we’re not quite human, yet.
I think the most humbling, scary thing, is that we really do have to learn to “be” and be a human. We do not simply get born knowing who we are, we have to find that out, mostly by trial and error.
It takes years…..
Love this! I went through a mini-life-crisis while transitioning from full-time marketing woman to stay-at-home baby maid. I found out all at once how much emphasis I had placed on being this type of professional or that type of dresser. Once I realized how superficial those parts of me were, I let go of it. I’ve had quite the awesome time just “being”.
Baby maid, ha ha ha thats a cool name. I have the opposite effect in my life. I find it hard to shake the title “sound guy”. Everyone calls me that, I think sometimes they tend to forget I am a human 🙂