We are not our jobs.
“You’re not how much money you have in the bank. You’re not the car you drive. You’re not the contents of your wallet. You’re not your f#c%!n& khakis.” - Fight Club (1999)
When adults ask kids what they want to be when they grow up, kids are expected to answer with a profession. Cowboy. Actress. Doctor.
But there's another way to answer that question. What do you want to be?
We could answer, "I want to be useful, healthy, and financially independent."
Our job can be a means to those ends. But for most of us, it isn't an end in and of itself.
Before Toni Morrison was a Nobel Laureate and Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist, she was a girl growing up in a working-class family in Lorain, Ohio. When she was old enough, she got a job cleaning the home of a wealthy woman.
She liked the job at first, but over time, the wealthy woman made increasingly difficult and uncomfortable demands. Toni wanted to quit. She confided in her dad.
Decades later, she wrote about that conversation with her dad. He told her four things.
Whatever the work is, do it well - not for the boss but for yourself.
You make the job; it doesn’t make you.
Your real life is with your family.
You are not the work you do. You are the person you are.
We have to earn a living. The average person spends 50 years working. But our job is just one part of the formula that helps us make a positive impact on the world. One part of the formula that helps us become what we want to be.
Useful. Healthy. Financially independent.
Our job is an important slice of the pie. Sometimes the biggest slice. But not the whole pie.
Just one slice.
You are not the work you do. You are the person you are.
