From time to time throughout my adulthood, I have had moments of crisis where I wondered what the hell I was doing with my life. When this has happened, it has always centered around my choice of career—never any of my personal life choices (though in all honesty, I probably should have questioned more of those).
In recent years I have come to understand how tight a grip capitalism has had on me, even to the extent of defining my identity by my profession. I’m far from alone in that; after all, one of the first questions people ask upon meeting is, “What do you do?” Despite this being an incredibly vague question with an almost infinite set of possible answers (I eat, I sleep, I obsessively play farming simulation video games) it is tacitly implied that what you do—the majority of your identity—hinges on your job. We often reply, “I’m an accountant,” I’m a musician,” “I work at a frozen yogurt store” without a second thought.
It is seldom that we truly think about the core of who we are beyond our careers, but for so many that identity can be gone in a flash. An unexpected health crisis forcing us into early retirement; a business failing; an industry collapsing; a global pandemic irrevocably changing the world’s economic landscape. If I were to strip away my job, how would I define myself? Who would I be without my career? What would I do if I didn’t have to spend almost all my waking hours being “productive”?
It wasn’t until this past year, really, that I began to truly accept that my work is not my worth. I am more than just the projects I manage, the deliverables I churn out, the hours spent editing manuscripts, the lessons I plan. I am a whole human, with needs and desires and dreams. I am an emotional being, who yearns to actually feel my feelings instead of squashing them down each day to be able to function as I clock in. I am a creative soul who needs to manifest, in writing or music or art, the figures that flit through my imagination and the thoughts that drift down the river of my consciousness.
So I say to myself, and to you, dear reader: You are more than your productivity. You are both less and more than you think you are—a small being in a vast universe; a giant in your loved ones’ eyes. You are the person your ancestors could not see, but loved even before you were born. You are the hopes and dreams that your inner child still holds dear.
Be the you who would exist without the weight of capitalism crushing your soul into coins. Unapologetically celebrate the person cowering in the shadows of your heart, waiting to come out and play. Revel in all that you are, and all that you are not.
And perhaps together, we can finally found out: who even are we?
Riffs on the Reg 