I am directing A Red Plaid Shirt, a new play that takes a funny, sweet look at retirement. In working with the actors and talking about their characters, we have talked a lot about identities. It has gotten me to thinking.
As young people we take on many identities. We are someone’s child, someone’s sibling, we are a student, an athlete, a member of the band, a scholar. We take on identities that are hoisted on us like nerd, good girl, loner, life of the party, class clown, or troublemaker.
We eventually grow into being other things, maybe a spouse, a parent, or whatever profession we decide to pursue. Our view of our own identity is probably influenced by what we thought and heard as youngsters, but hopefully we grow out of some of that and change accordingly.
Often we internalize the characteristics that people point out with these identities and it begins to change who we are. We believe and buy into the things we hear about ourselves. Some of this is hard to outgrow.
Even day to day, we present ourselves differently to different people. We might be more careful with our choice of words around the ladies at church than we are around our other friends. We are sweeter to some people than others. In some cases we have to be the strong one, only to be able to let go and be taken care of by someone else.
Identifying ourselves by how we make money is probably the most common of all. When asked what we do, the job that pays us is what we answer. Doctor, lawyer, teacher, receptionist, whatever we do for a living is what we say “we do”.
I have never really had a “career.” I spent years working at banks and I was pretty good at it. I love math, I am pretty organized and love helping people. But it was never what I planned to do or what I wanted to do. I have had other odd jobs along the way- preschool teacher, bookkeeper and more, but nothing I could really see identifying myself with long term.
Being a wife and mom is what I have done for the longest amount of time, but being a “stay at home mom” seems lame when my “child” is about to be 32 and owns his own home!
Not too long after I graduated from college with a BFA in musical theatre in 2013, I was asked what I did. I was in the middle of one play and already cast in another show that started rehearsals immediately after the close of the first show. When someone asked what I “did” I said I was an actress. I got a strange look. When I told my husband the story his response was “you didn’t!”
Needless to say, I have never given that answer again!
At that point and time, that was what I was doing! I made no money from those shows and I guess that meant it was a dumb answer.
As part of our discussions in rehearsal we have talked about how losing the identity of your paying job seems harder for men. Women have identities that are very diverse and we are more willing to realize that what we make money from might not be what our true identity is determined by.
As the new generation of women are more ingrained in their career (and have careers instead of just jobs) I would assume that is changing. For a lot of us in my generation though, being a mom or volunteering somewhere or wherever our passion lies is more a part of our identity than just a paying job.
Men of a certain generation were the” bread winners” and that was their identity, end of discussion. That seems to make it harder to find themselves when they no longer go into work each day and get that paycheck.
So who are you? What do you do? Are there so many facets to you that it would be hard to even answer that question? And do you feel that if you gave your hobby as an answer it would feel weird? Would people get it?
My son has a wooden plaque in his house that says, “Don’t get so busy making a living that you forget to make a life.”
I think it is easy to put all of your strength and energy into a career. It is your future, it is what keeps a roof over your head and clothes on your back. It allows for you to eat and stay warm and dry on dreary days like today. It occasionally lets you go on a vacation or treat someone to dinner out. It feels imperative to put your attention and your time into that one main thing.
But then where are you when you head home that last time? When you say good bye to what you have worked on for so long? Who are you when you are no longer a doctor, lawyer, teacher? When you retire, what do you do?
How we see ourselves shapes who we are. When we no longer see ourselves as what we have been for years, where does that leave us?
Maybe if we see ourselves in other terms, as artists and actors, golfers and swimmers, parents and children, teachers and students, children of God and caretakers of the world, rather than just as our profession, then as our identity shifts and changes it will be easier to adjust.
On the other hand maybe those big shifts are just a rite of passage that we have to go through. Maybe we are one thing up to a point in our life and have to become something different later on. Maybe it is inevitable.
Personally, I don’t like the idea of all of my eggs in one basket. I like to think I am an actor, a singer, a painter, a writer, a director, a mom, a wife, a friend. Most of those things I will always be. Nothing can take away some of those identities.
Others may come and go and that is OK as long as I still have something to cling to, as long as somewhere in my mind I can still find an identity I can live with and feel good about.
“Aging is not for sissies” my mom used to tell me. So far it hasn’t hit me too hard. But in preparing for this play, I realize that my lack of profession and my inability to label myself as any one thing might actually work to my advantage! Who knew?
