01 Identity

“What do you do?”

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It’s the dreaded cocktail party question. It challenges us to define ourselves in some sort of competitive social hierarchy. I’m a [blank]. I’m in [blank]. I do [blank]. It can never tell enough of the story, even more limiting in this age of precarious work and career hopping. For better or worse, the job both transmits and receives our sense of self, self-value, self-worth and—if we’re lucky—sense of purpose.

And so we go to it. We perform our real identities and the ones in our job titles. We spend hours with the same people every day. We forge relationships. We do what needs to be done. And, in some respects, we become ourselves.