That’s Who She Is

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Who Can I Be?

I heard a particular question about a thousand times as a kid. You probably heard it, too. “What do you want to be when you grow up?” Family members asked me. Friends of my parents wanted to know. Even adults I met only once (strangers) assumed I had thought about and knew the answer. We’re all supposed to know, right?

I never had an answer. Not really. If I did, it was a lie. I lied because I figured out that not having an answer would disappoint them. The answer could change, but I should always have an answer. But I didn’t. The truth is I never wanted to be any one thing or even lots of things. I wanted and still want to be someone. I don’t mean a notorious someone. Just someone who is not most importantly a “what”. 

I don’t know all of the reasons being something with a title never made sense to me. I do know that each day, I can’t wait to learn more about who I can be. It doesn’t matter, either, if I never figure out exactly who she is. I just want to live becoming someone every day. The definition is not important. 

I don’t think people really see each other if they stop paying attention after finding out what people are. Prioritizing what someone is seems to take away from who they are. It might be comfortable and familiar and structured, but I’d rather be uncomfortable. I’d rather live with a surprising and messy vibe that doesn’t stick to one idea of someone.

When I think about it, the only time I have really felt pressure in my life is when I believed I had to be something for whoever. Sometimes that something was for me to please them. I was so afraid to disappoint them. No matter what, it always seemed like I disappointed them. I have never really been able to pretend that I understood the importance of being something.

I really do struggle with the “somethings” people become. It strikes me as odd that it’s “normal” to start talking about what people will be before talking about who they will be (if they ever talk about that at all). I guess life is easier when kids are introduced to different professions and paths early so their course can be set – that familiar, comfortable, and structured one. Just like I mentioned in That’s An Education – Part 1 kids are shown the sidewalk very early. Growing up to be something is a framework society has built. Is it necessary? Probably. I just don’t think it should be that important. 

In the same way that the structure of school is baffling, so is the importance and pressure of choosing what I want to be. How is this more important than who we are to each other? Why are psychology and sociology the only places where it is acceptable to communicate about our humanity? Why don’t we talk about it everywhere? Because it’s too much about feelings? It seems like who we are and our feelings about ourselves and others are talked about more from the perspective of disorders. I’m starting to think that’s not helpful at all. 

I get that titles, labels, and instructions help us figure stuff out. By choosing a “what”, I get a map. It has achievements and milestones I can aim for. I need some of that, but I think I can come up with the way I achieve and succeed without worrying about how I’m supposed to get there. I want people in my life to say “she’s just a nice person”. People seem to say that when they can’t find a label. To me, it’s the best label ever. It’s not ”just” anything. To be kind and caring (and fun 🙂) is everything. Imagine if it was virally contagious.

Being a Something

Just like adults spend most of their time being something, kids spend most of their time learning how to become something. Skills and knowledge. I love both of those things. What I think is missing in our overall education is how those things connect people. How does learning a skill during school and applying it during a career help bring an understanding of how to belong to the bigger world out there? Maybe some people don’t want or need to understand. That’s totally fine. I need to, though. I want to belong to the bigger tangled up world I see.

Our words and ideas matter not just for a grade in school and the money to be made, but for personal relationships. Society says we all have to get through school to go and find something to be in the world. But what about the world? If I’m so busy becoming and then being something, when do I get to learn about the rest of the world and all of the people in it? 

The most obvious answer is to just pick something that allows me this opportunity. But, I’m not going to choose just one thing. A constant theme in my life is that I’m so aware that I only get one of them so why would I choose only one thing to be in it? 

I only have one life just like you. Deciding now that I will be something for all of the adult portion of it sounds a little too final and kind of like a trap. How do I know by the age of eighteen that being a lawyer, for instance, is what I think it is? I’ve seen so many adults, some of them young, regret what they chose to be or felt obligated to be. 

You know those house sharing websites? Why can’t we do this with jobs? Different places, different responsibilities, and it would give us a change from our everyday life. Not job sharing, but job switching. The rate at which people leave jobs means that continuity is already at risk, so why not try something different? It sounds crazy, but is it? If companies had a way to sponsor it, what a great way to bring in different influences and keep people from burning out. Just sayin…

Just One Life

I’ve already seen too many lost people. They thought they had to choose from the acceptable list. Some of you are thinking “Callie, you’re nuts. We all have to decide on something to survive.” I agree, kind of. We have to decide how to survive, but we shouldn’t do that at the expense of becoming someone and just settle for being a thing. Settling on something and then spending most of our time on it neglects the most important truths about this world – that we are in it with each other and just for a little while.

Most adults spend more than two-thirds of their time being something. It’s no wonder we are raised to believe we need to figure this out as quickly as possible. And when society limits what these somethings can be with all of the expectations it has for individual contribution to the greater good, in order to be accepted, we must settle on something. Everyone has to do their part. 

What is really involved in this responsibility? It seems like we are being asked to repay a greater power for our existence and society is the entity we pay. I don’t think I’ll fall for that guilt trip. I do see life as a gift, but one from an anonymous donor who expects nothing in return. The only person I owe for this gift is me. I am accountable for this life.

Maybe you are reading this thinking that it makes no sense. If we don’t become plumbers, construction workers, doctors, or tech giants the world will just collapse in on itself. This is not really where I am going with my idea here. I’m simply wondering if it makes sense to spend so much of our lives defining ourselves by our jobs. We have to have them. I’m not naive. But, I want to be the someone who makes sure she has the energy and time to see humanity in all of its forms. I have just this one time. For me. I’ll say it again. That’s all I get, isn’t it? Just this one.

How Do I Become Someone?

I think labels keep us small. They keep us under presumption. Assumed categories. For example, I can’t say that I understand gender fluidity, but I can say that I see the issues that traditional gender presumptions bring. When there is conformity, there is presumption. Some people can’t live in these gender presumptions. They need people in their world to see that they don’t want to live trapped in them. We each have liberty to live as we choose. 

I never want my liberty to be at the expense of yours, and it shouldn’t be. I believe that if I follow what I want in life, the judgment may hurt, but I’m not harming anyone as long as I take from what life offers. When I judge in return, I’m just trading hurt for hurt and not respecting my own liberty.

I’m still trying to understand what it’s like to be presumed to be something I’m not. The best way I learn is to not judge why someone chooses to live in ways I don’t. It doesn’t matter. Just like the example of gender, the same can be said for political assumptions, religious assumptions, and career assumptions. If someone is a [fill in the blank] then they must be [fill in the blank]. This is what labels do. They keep us boxed in. People assume the framework is absolute. It’s not.

If where I was raised, my identified gender, my sexual orientation, the skin color I was born with, my size, height, hair color, religious beliefs, economic class, and job title all make me a particular set of qualities, judge me as good or bad, determine if I can belong or not, I have to fight to become someone outside of all of it. Someone who is a whole person. I want to be able to like what I like, talk about anything, see all the places that I can, and learn about all the people who weren’t raised where I was, are any gender, sexual orientation, skin color, size, height, with all colors of hair or no hair, and in any and every economic situation with any job they choose. 

The people of the world who aren’t all of the labels that can be put on me are the ones that will see the world with a different perspective than I do. They can teach me, and I want to learn about all the ways they see the world. What they believe, think and feel. I have had very difficult relationships where the way the other person sees life is the only way they can see me. We didn’t connect. I have to admit also that I needed to see my world as one where I’m worthy of being seen outside of my labels. Only then can I have the relationships I want. 

Relationships with respect. Each of us comes in as someone not like the other. Connections that bring life changing realizations. This is what I want. My friends show me how the world can show up differently from the one that first found me. To truly be in that friendship means that my world and theirs don’t collide but connect in complex and interesting ways.

I want to be someone in a world where I know people aren’t there to define me. A world where I’m uncomfortable learning about the differences people reveal to me. I want a world where excitement is part of but stronger than what makes me uncomfortable. I love looking outside of the bubble that I thought made up my world and seeing a world not made up of bubbles, but of twisted connections from one unique person to another. 

I used to feel an odd comfort in the anxiety of figuring out how to be something that others wanted. At least it gave me a direction to focus on. That imagined feeling of how it would be when I finally became “her”. It was motivational for a while, but it took me nowhere. It became an unfulfilling and frustrating place. A place where my worth could not exist. 

So, I’m not settling into any “thing”. Instead, I will become the someone I want to be. I’ll open my world up big enough to see all of the amazing ways humans choose to live their lives. I’m learning that labels exist for informational purposes only. That the only dumb question is the one that holds an assumption about someone in ignorance. The scary part is all of the pain that I might see and feel as I realize that many people in the world won’t accept my approach to becoming someone. I’ll take it, though, because the beautiful part is all the rest.

I’m off to keep finding her. That amazing someone I know I’m becoming.

Check out “Who Am I?” on the Poems page