"Life's most persistent and urgent question is: "What are you doing for others?" ~Martin Luther King, Jr.
“You have lived a lot of lives.”
A friend and client interrupted me once while I was recounting a story about my years living in the Catskills, running a horse camp. In my 34 long years on this earth, I have been many things, lived many places, and known many people. Yet for most of those years I’ve been desperately trying to answer the same question that plagues us all- who am I?
I wanted, for almost all of my life, more than anything to be able to say I was a farmer. I learned to drive a tractor on a deer farm. I picked sweet corn at 4am when I was small enough to not be able to reach all the ears. I weeded acres and acres of pumpkins by hand, wielded a hay hook while my older sisters held me on the wagon, and spent a summer painting all the buildings and equipment on our property with a small hand brush. I milked cows in a tie stall, fed calves, cleaned pens, learned to run a spreader and a skidsteer and throw tires and move heifers but I was never a farmer.
Farmers were tougher, harder, more dedicated, more hard working, somehow better than I. They had a reason to wear boots and Carhartts and drive trucks and knew how to fix anything.
I often as a child dreamed of being a writer. I wrote published poetry, I wrote articles, I wrote terrible and wonderful stories, and I wrote a grant proposal that got riding lessons and helmets for younger kids in my school. I wrote speeches- lots of them- and advertisements for real estate. I wrote papers upon papers but I was not a writer.
Writers were more creative than I, more worldly, more interesting. They wore strange jewelry and had wild hair and glasses and shunned materialism.
It was much the same with musicians. I played in a jazz band when I was so young I don’t even appear in the photos above the music stand. I played the piano accompaniment to school musicals, played at town events, played Taps in cemeteries, played for college bands as a middle schooler. I hid out often in my troubled years in the school’s practice room, and had a walls decorated in musical achievements, but I was not a musician.
Musicians looked a lot like writers, they smoked, and they knew all the names of other musicians and wore them on cool, vintage t-shirts.
And then there were the horses. From the farthest time I could remember, I bummed around anyone who had a horse. I did a paper and video project my senior year on natural horsemanship, started my first unbroke horse when I was 17. I started teaching riding lessons to backyard kids around the same time, managed a summer camp and lesson and trail riding business with 40 horses. I studied equine business in college, worked at thoroughbred sales, took kids to shows, showed on college riding teams, bought and sold a few horses. I’ve taught cumulatively a couple hundred students, I’ve done competitive trail riding, leased a horse and showed in the jumpers one year, showed a reiner, showed a cowhorse. And yet, I am not a horseman.
Horsemen. Horsemen were all the things I was not- they were tough, dedicated, hard working, and serious like farmers. They were creative, artistic, and wise. They knew every other horseman that had ever lived, they knew the nuances of bit styles and weights, and spoke a secret language. They were fearless, they never flinched at a spook or buck. They knew how to wear wild rags and cowboy hats, or breeches with vests and pearls and hair neatly pulled over their ears. They didn’t sell out to office jobs, and they’d never hidden in stalls crying because they were afraid to swing a leg over or lead a rank horse.
I could ski not long after I could walk, I taught ski lessons from the time I was 14, lived at the mountain, have been accused of being more graceful on skis than my own feet, and yet I am not a skier.
I have taught riding lessons, ski lessons, swim lessons, music lessons, lectured college students on taxes and finance, taught professional seminars on trust structures and financial record keeping, but I am not a teacher.
I held some school records, was MVP of our track team, raced cross country in college, but never have I ever been accused of being an athlete. I trip a lot, have never done a pushup, and ALL protein shakes are terrible. I said what I said.
I have a child but I am not a mom. Moms drive SUVs and are organized, they remember holidays and birthdays and enroll their kids in sports and don’t wear overalls to daycare drop off.
I had a fairly successful career in tax and finance, went to an Ivy League business school, and then started a company, but I have absolutely never been a professional, that one is for certain- there’s a long list of employers and classmates who will confirm readily.
I ride a cowhorse and have wrestled a few beefers but I’m not a cowgirl. Cowgirls work on real ranches, they pronounce chaps and remuda correctly, and know what to do with a rope.
I have a few friends but I am not a good girlfriend. Girl friends have weekend getaways and call themselves ‘tribes’ and enjoy spa days.
I married a man but I am not a wife. Wives clean and sacrifice.
I think sometimes, with sadness, on the angst I have created for myself for decades, trying to find a box to fit in, a title to hang on my head, a place to belong. I think of the time wasted, and the joy lost, in searching for an identity defined by an appearance, a profession, a hobby, or a role. I look at the effort people put into their image, into their persona, into social media, trying desperately to do the same- and I want to tell them, as I have finally learned, the cold, beautiful, liberating answer.
No. One. Else. Cares.
It turned out I have been all of these things all along, and yet none of them mattered. Our appearance, our accolades, our descriptors- they are important only to ourselves, they live and die with us. We may take pride in them, but that pride is ours and ours alone.
Who I am is not what I can say about myself, nor how I appear in a picture, but instead what I have done for others.
I have taught- and so I have given knowledge. I have coached- and so I have given confidence. I have run a business- and so I have given opportunity. I have listened- and so I have given comfort. I have consulted- and so I have given hope. I have parented- and so I have given life. I have loved- and so I have inspired love.
It is only in these things, in what we have given to others, that we find who we are. And only in this realization that we can retire the angst of discovering “Who am I?”, and take up the joy of “Who can I help?”