I am the box I am in

I’ve been butting up against the ways in which I limit myself in a major way recently. It’s not the first time, of course, but it always feels like scraping off another layer of skin, or any other unpleasant metaphor you can come up with. The point being: it is uncomfortable.

The crux of this particular matter is identity. Or more specifically, conflating what I do with who I am.

As I said, this is not a new inflection point for me, though it feels different this time around.

Think of it like concentric circles. It used to be that my professional and personal identities overlapped completely. What I did was who I was. I remember this one time I met a guy in a bar. When I told him I worked for Amnesty International he responded, “Oh, so you are actually cool.” I think I saw myself like that too: it wasn’t that I was funny or smart or unique or creative, it’s that I was paid to do something people like me thought was cool.

Over time, my various selves have separated and come together in other ways. I no longer feel that I am what I do. It’s more that how I do things are determined by who I am. In today’s parlance, I make an effort to bring my full self to work and to make space for others to do the same. That’s how I ended up investing a lot in ethical management and deliberate development and trust and transparency as prerequisites for working effectively with anyone on anything. That’s also how I ended up leaning towards transformational rather than transactional coaching. I honestly thought that was the end of this particular struggle.

But recently it is as if I am running up against the walls of not-for-profit management altogether. I know I am more than this — not in an ethical way or as a value construct, but in terms of identity. I am bigger than any one job. We all are. And yet I can’t seem to rid myself of the feeling that maybe I am not. That maybe, if there are no more circles to overlap, I am nothing at all.

I know the only way out is through, but as I am sitting in this muck, I am not 100% certain that I really want out. There is warmth in my delusions, if you will. Ways in which my limitations protect me from holding the full weight of what it means to be alive.

But does it also keep me from truly living?

That’s the question I hold as I sit.