What Defines Us

A job is a job. It's a way to pay for a living, but that's it. Don't let it define your happiness. You work to live, not live to work. Work on what makes you happy.

Boy, what a punch those thirty six words pack!

This is a concept that has been weighing on my mind as of late. Yes, I work. Yes, I need to use money for everyday living. Yes a job that pays cashy money is essential to my ultimate goals. But I will not let my worldly job define me. I don't want to come home from a day of work and collapse onto the couch, ne'er to move again. What a waste of a day.


I don't want to be the 'girl from the store' or 'the check-out girl'. That is not who I am. How dare someone generalize me? How dare they generalize you? I realize that this is something I cannot directly change, but I have been consciously not referring to people by their jobs of late, and whenever someone calls me 'the check-out girl', I politely say, "That's not all I am!", or "Yes, but I also like to garden, and I love dogs!", or something of that nature.

I think it's very important for someone to be constantly reminded about who they truly are, and what matters the most to them. I think that because, unless we are in touch frequently with our hopes for the future, our dreams, people lose sight of them. They become deeply involved in the superficial world. It is so very easy to do. I think it has always been, but I believe it's even easier to get lost in it now.

In a large way, technology has saved us. It lets millions of dollars be raised for the needy in a matter of days, able to reach hundreds of millions of people in mere hours across all sorts of platforms. Technology lets doctors perfect their craft through ever-detailed scans and images. Technology lets loved ones who are far from each other talk face to face. It lets people show and share the beauty of the world with each other.

But in the same way, it has doomed us. It has made us greedy, always needing or wanting the newest things. The best ones. It has corrupted our innocence. It has corrupted us. We are exposed to everything all at once, at the touch of our fingertips. Constantly connected and wired, constantly barraged and set on edge until we want to explode.

Doomed us, that is, unless we can break free from it like a drowning person breaching the surface of the water. A violence of water and gasping, flailing and reaching for the nearest life preserver.

Unfortunately, many of us will never realize we are under the surface in the first place. Some of us will try to stay above it, and fail for lack of willpower, or for lack of knowledge how to survive this brave new world. A few of us will grab our preservers and be towed to the boat; here we can swim in the pool at our leisure, but never fall back into it - out of control. Able to strike a balance between floating and sinking.

But because of the need to have the best of the best, people will work as much as they can, to pay for things they don't need, to impress people they don't even know. They will let work define them. They will come home to their families and then use their technology to make witty posts and hope people respond. Essentially, these drowning people are tugging on apron strings, looking for validation and attention.

That's not who I am. That's not who I want to be.

To be nobody but yourself in a world that's doing it's best to make you somebody else, is to fight the hardest battle you are ever going to fight. Never stop fighting.
- E.E. Cummings

Until next time,