Finding courage in connections
“So, what do you do?”
I used to define myself by the response to that question. My title. My status. My list of achievements. Me having a good day/a good life was dictated by whether I was rock-starring it at work. Mostly because I didn’t really exist outside of work. I was so wrapped up in all the ‘other’ important stuff that I simply didn’t have time to, or know how to, have a conversation with myself about what I actually wanted to do with my life.
Now that I’m on an extended break from work, I have to dig a little deeper when answering that question from someone I’ve just met. I almost start to apologise for the misunderstanding – that I don’t have a job at the moment, so am suddenly unqualified to answer the question. Then I start to say something about recovering from cancer treatment, but that seems all wrong too. I don’t want to be defined by a disease any more than I want to be defined by a job title. I am so much more than that. But it got me thinking about whether it’s time to dream up something a bit bigger and believe it.
I was out with a friend once who managed to convince a guy that her job was grading the St Kilda beach in Melbourne at dawn to make sure all the drug syringes had been picked up before the morning swimmers were out and about. She even went so far as to describe how the indented lines in the sand were formed. I stood there, equally as shocked and impressed as the guy asking the question, but only because she was so damn convincing! Mind you, she was a 6ft sassy glamazon woman, so she could have said she was one of Santa’s elves and I’m sure he still would have believed her… but the fact remained, at that moment, she had painted a picture of doing something completely UN-believable, and yet had such conviction, EVEN I nearly bought it!
What she could have said was “I’m a [insert label here]” and he would have nodded and imposed his own assumptions about her label, and then said “Oh, well I’m a [insert next label here]”. And she would have likely done the same. Then there just would have been copious amounts of more nodding to fill awkward silences and more assumptions, and eventually someone would have run to the safe haven of the bartender.
We start by wanting to get to know who someone is but instead seem to focus on what they do. The real shocker is that we do it to ourselves just as much – instead of asking ourselves what we have to offer, we define our worth by what we do: our title.
Labels only lead to limitations. We forget that life is about so much more. It’s about our capacity to love. To accept. To connect. To understand. To share with. To learn about. Those are the real qualities we offer as humans.
So when meeting someone new, what if we ditch the old “So, what do you do?” (and the cheat sheet list of assumptions) and instead try something else…What do you believe in? What did you dream about as a kid? What do you dream about now? If you could change the world, what would it be? Do you sing in the shower? What’s your favourite way to spend a rainy Sunday?
What if we asked ourselves the same questions. Answering may not be easy, or maybe they should be.
One of best things I’ve done is made new friends that don’t have the last 5 or 10 or 20 years of baggage to throw at me when I say I can’t do something. Or when I say I want to do something different. Like water colour painting. All I hear is “But you can’t paint!” from those that ‘know me’. It echoes my own thoughts “Oh yeah, that’s right, I’m not creative“. I’ve not picked up a paint brush since year 6 art class. But you know what, I was wrong. And so were all those people who supposedly knew me for the last however many years. Apparently, I AM creative. I just needed some belief and opportunity and the blank slate offered by someone new. The art teacher didn’t say “How many people can paint?” she said, “How many people want to give it a crack?”.
The only limitations you will encounter are those you impose on yourself. This was the advice I used to give young grads coming through the workplace. “I can’t” vs “I can”. There’s only a one letter difference there, but it creates a lifetime of whether choices are granted or taken away.
As children, we all get given one gift – to dream. As adults, we all get given the additional gift of making decisions. They’re not mutually exclusive, but yet we treat dreams like Santa or the Easter bunny – they eventually get erased or forgotten with ‘growing up’.
Limitations and boundaries will always have a place in our lives… it’s called a coffin.
So in the meantime, my own response to the ‘what do you do’ question, should anyone ask me, will be something like: “I dream big. Walk proud. Breathe free. Live gratefully.”
