Who Am I?

Have you ever heard the song "Who Am I" written by Bernstein? I have a version with Nina Simone singing and in the years immediately following college I was really attracted to the piece for the strong words and fantastic music written to go along with them. Lately, I have been spurred into thinking about what makes us who we are- mostly incited by a recent post from a fellow blogger bemoaning their uncertainty in career and life choices.

What I have noticed, in my short and rather inexperienced life, is that Western society equates job/career with who you are. More often than not, when meeting a new person, one of the first three questions is "So, what do you do?". We are so quick to label each other as good, bad, happy, or sad based on preconceived notions of their job.

Sometime last year the Travel Channel had a really fascinating series based around anisland tribe (Tanna Tribe) coming to America and experiencing modern life while trying to promote the idea of peace. It was interesting for a lot of reasons, but I remember Erik and I commenting on how the show labeled each of the tribesmen. There were 5 of them- The Chief, Head Dancer, Medicine Man, The Translator, and Happy Man. The Travel Channel tried so hard to appease our job=identity proneness that they even gave a label to a man who was just happy.

I wish that we could start valuing people on their character rather than their profession. I wish when I responded to the question of "what do you do?" with "stay at home mother" that there would be less judgment and smugness in the eyes of the asker.

When I think of the people I care for I don't love them because of their job, but because of who they really are. I don't love my husband because he can program computers. I don't love my sister because she has a degree in Art History. I love them because they are kind, funny, gentle, sweet, caring, dedicated, and smart.

Next time you meet someone new instead of asking them "What do you do for a living?", why don't you ask them about their family or their hobby? I bet you will get an interesting answer and they will probably be excited to share something about who they are.

Who am I? I am a woman who loves: singing, playing the piano rather poorly, trying new recipes, getting compliments, nursing my son, walking with Charlie, jogging and thinking about how terrible it is the whole time, creating, reading books as long as they don't make me cry too hard or scare me too much, spending time with my family...

...who also happens to have worked for a great politician and worthy causes.

Edit: Originally, Claire posted the lyrics to "Who am I," but I reminded her that we, do not in fact, live in a free country. We instead live in these United States of Disney and co. I don't really feel like figuring out how to deal with a DMCA takedown notice in ten years when RCA or Sony BMG decides to troll blogs looking for this sort of violation, so I've removed the lyrics. Here is a youtube link to nina simone's performance instead. That link probably won't last for the same reasons. Note that this is ridiculous - and that fair use doesn't cover this kind of thing. It should, but instead of getting better, it's getting worse.