A reflection on identity. Terrifying or not, it’s still worth sitting with. 

I was standing next to my plus one who’s also a close friend at a wedding reception. A few seconds later, the bride walked up to us and introduced us to a woman and two other men standing by. A few seconds after that, one of the men we just met was asked, “So, what do you do?” He paused for a beat and said, “I breathe. I love my kids. I go on long walks in the evening.” 

He smiled. Then he added, “Oh, and I manage logistics at a shipping firm.” 

I thought that was interesting. The way he phrased it, more than that, it gave me a look into his perspective. It reminded me how rarely we answer with who we are rather than what we do. I bet I wasn’t the only one impressed by his answer, others probably were too. And I’m convinced that leading with what you value and what moves you is far more interesting than rattling off your resume. Let people meet you, not your LinkedIn profile. 

Funny how we wear our job titles like family names, as if we were born into them. Since when did careers become surnames? 

“I’m a dentist,” or “I’m a coder.” or “I’m a chef.” The verb “am” always slips in instead of I work as, not I practice, but I am. And in doing so, we unknowingly surrender a piece of ourselves to the performance. 

In a way, that first question at the party “What do you do?” act as a shortcut to identity, almost like a socially acceptable way of asking, “How should I think of you?” Because in our modern culture, a person’s occupation functions like a resume in human form, but we’re not resumes. We’re not job titles. And despite what your LinkedIn profile might suggest, you’re not your career. 

We Are More Than Job Titles

2 years ago my running partner and I ran 3 times a week, sometimes more than that depending on our individual schedules. Every morning, we ran 3 or 5 miles before sunrise. A little over 4 months in as my running partner, a torn ligament ended it. Just like that, he was sidelined and he didn’t take it well. At first he was unhappy and miserable for a week or two, then he went surly for months. He would snap if you so much as ask about almost anything concerning his improvement status. There was nothing we [friends, family ] could do to help him, we just cared for him as much as we could. I knew he was afraid he might not be able to do what he loved again, he was missing his ability to move as well as the identity that comes with it as a fitness coach. Eventually, he recovered and returned to motion. But for a while, he was bothered about it. And I wondered if he hadn’t healed, would he have made peace with it? Maybe. But not without a long fight. 

Relatively, I know a man who spent 30 years as a surgeon and retired at 69. Within months, he sank into depression and only got worse over time. One day his wife came for a visit and told my parents that watching him go through it felt like living with a ghost. It’s sad but thankfully he got the help he needed. 

Now, like these two men, not everyone takes retirement well. Ironically, retirement has even been listed as a top indicator of chronic health breakdown putting people at risk of heart attack or even stroke. This shows surprisingly that retirement can be stressful! While part of your retirement plan should be saving for health-related expenses, an equal part should be preventing health problems. In that case, a good retirement plan will be one in which you’re active as well as being free from money stress. 

You can probably already guess where this is going. What these two men share is simple: they love what they do, deeply. And that love is both their strength and their burden. Because people who care too much about their work are often the ones who struggle the hardest to let go. (It’s always easier to walk away from something you never loved in the first place.)

Viktor Frankl, the Holocaust survivor and psychiatrist, once wrote that life is never made unbearable by circumstances, but only by lack of meaning and purpose. But meaning isn’t entirely found in accomplishment. It’s found in being, in a state of mind. 

Still, our culture doesn’t reward that. Productivity has become a proxy for purpose. If we’re not building, scaling, or publishing, we feel like we’ve vanished. So we introduce ourselves by our function, and we expect others to do the same. This is how strangers size each other up. 

It’s also how people break. 

The tighter you grip a label, the more it hurts when life forces you to let it go. I’m not a runner, but I run. I’m not a musician, but I play piano most nights. I don’t call myself a teacher, but I’ve taught quite a few people through hard seasons. If the writing stops, I haven’t failed at being a writer. I’m simply not writing right now. My worth hasn’t shifted. This is the mental pivot that gives me peace when the world is constantly changing. 

To be clear, there’s nothing wrong with loving what you do or feeling proud of it. But identity works best when it’s flexible, not fixed. Shifting your perspective isn’t easy, because labels give us comfort. They offer direction, they even create belonging. Saying “I’m a lawyer” comes with built-in structure and respect. You know where to be. You know how people will treat you. You know exactly what’s expected.

But every identity you wear like a suit eventually becomes a skin you can’t shed. And the more you rely on that suit to feel like yourself, the more vulnerable you are when life asks you to take it off. 

When the activity stops, you feel exposed. When the title ends, you feel erased. That means you weren’t fired only from a job, you feel like you were evicted from an identity. 

The Stoic philosopher Epictetus said, “It’s not what happens to you, but how you react to it that matters.” If you react to loss of position with existential collapse, the position was too large in your life. 

Who are you exactly? 

If you’re Stripped of your job today. What’s left? 

What excites you? 

What kind of friend are you? 

What do people feel after they’ve spent time with you? Do you calm the room or stir it up? 

Are you generous with your attention? 

Do you have hobbies? 

Do you treat others well, even when no one’s watching? 

These qualities exist whether you’re employed or not, successful or not, recognized or not. 

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