Who are you? No, really, who exactly are you? Perhaps that's not a fair question. Attempting to define yourself when, in reality, yourself is the only thing you have and encompasses everything you feel or think, including the idea contained in this very sentence, is a messy prospect. Like carefully angling two mirrors to check on your quarantine DIY haircut, looking inward can be a recursive nightmare. Besides, who we are is constantly changing in tiny ways, little fits and starts. Everyone we meet has the potential to affect the answer, to change who you are.
And yet as difficult as it may seem, Without big questions like that we have trouble making big choices in an honest and clear-eyed way. Thankfully, there is another question that I've found helpful in situations like that. Though I almost never put it into words, this is a question I seem to ask myself of people I meet, folks with whom I work, volunteer or collaborate. This is a question that almost always answers itself after just a few minutes of talking with someone, and it gets right to the core of the big scary "who are you?" question in a somewhat roundabout way. This is my question: what do you serve?
We all serve something: your work, your art, your kids, an idea, that goofy online message board you've been a part of for 20 years. We almost never serve just one thing, of course, and we serve some things for a fleeting moment before moving on to something else. Regardless of how we do it, we all serve something.
I was talking with a recent college graduate a few weeks ago who was examining her options after her first job had turned sour. I asked her what she wanted in a career, and she couldn't answer. That's not unusual. As a matter of fact, I went 27 years in the workforce before I ever asked myself that question honestly, and when I did I ran into the same soupy fog of "I don't know" that she did. I told her to try answering the opposite question: what don't you want? That worked for me. Make a list of things you really loathe and another list of things you don't want to lose. It's not definitive, but it'll do for a starting place.
If you ask most people what they want, the answers are passive. They will tell you of the things they want to have or to have happen to them, a shopping list that we often mistake for real goals and aspirations. We want good things to happen to us, but ask yourself this: what good do you want to make happen? What do you want to do or make depends on the effect you want to have on the world around you. What changes do you want to see and what role would you want to play in bringing them about?
In other words, what do you serve? Do you see yourself as a member of a small community inside a larger one? We are currently living through a time when our survival depends in part on the ability of adults to act like adults, to accept a small measure of responsibility to behave in a way that protects people we do not know, people who may not look like us or celebrate the same holidays. I worried then as I do now that as a species we may not be up to the task.
Sometimes when I meet someone, it very quickly becomes apparent that the thing they serve is themselves. They seem to believe that it is they who should be served by others. These are folks who like things and status. They like attention. They love to see themselves as victims even as they passively victimize others. More than anything, though, they seem to enjoy throwing fits in grocery stores when asked to wear a mask.
And somehow that image sums up the hope and disappointment of 2020 perfectly: wearing a mask in public is literally the least you can do to keep your neighbors safe, and for some people that is entirely too much to ask.
It all makes you wonder: what do those folks serve?
Some people spend half their lives reading self-help books about how to be happy. In truth, I'm happiest when I barely exist. I'm happiest when I serve. Service gives us purpose. It gives us community. It gives us the chance to make the world we want one interaction at a time. If you need more than that, I really don't know what to tell you.
Oh, and wear a mask. Please.