Defining Oneself
Monday, June 28, 2010 at 3:25PM “To be nobody but yourself, in a world which is doing its best, night and day, to make you everybody else, means to fight the hardest battle that any human being can fight – and never stop fighting.” – e.e. cummings
How do you define yourself in a world where others are constantly trying to define you? The topic of a passionate discussion I recently had made me ask myself the simple (yet complicated) question - should you define yourself by what you do for a living, or by who you are? It seems that a lot of people think what you do does define who you are. I suppose that’s all well and good if what you are doing is aligned with your purpose and vision. But what about those who aren’t doing what they really want, simply as a means to an end? As creative people, we sometimes have to work at jobs we don’t care for in order to pay the rent, so we can then do what we want to do. Should a day job be used as the foundation to define oneself? Is there a random timeline one must adhere to in order to claim “I am an Artist!” with any degree of authority to the world? How much is a paycheck involved with how we see ourselves, and with how others see us? If someone goes home every night from her job as a receptionist and paints – does that make her any less a painter and any more a receptionist?
I don’t think so. While it’s true that a painter paints, a writer writes, and an actor acts – you can go for years, or even an entire lifetime, before you are paid for what you do. These professions don’t take the same route as other more traditional professions where you go to school, get your degree and then look for a job in your field. Although even with those careers, it may take time - you may start at the bottom and have to work your way up the corporate ladder. But in the arts, is there a ladder of success? Isn’t the very nature of art much more ambiguous than that to begin with? Why the obsession in our culture of using currency as the measure for everything – including how we can define who we are? Does it make you any less an artist if your paintings don’t sell until after your death?
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