Are You Living a Eulogy Life or a Resume Life?

“Are you living a eulogy life or a resume life?” This was a question that my professor, Jack Miller, asked us in a graduate class. It was a question that really stayed with me; now and then when I am making career choices or personal choices in my life, his question will pop up into my mind again.

In our surroundings from our family life to school to social media platforms, time and time again, we are bombarded with messages to live our best lives connected to career choices. When you think about it, a question that we ask of our students since kindergarten and throughout elementary, high school, undergraduate to graduate school is this: “What do you want to be when you grow up/when you finish that degree?” I remember, as an elementary school teacher, I was also focused on asking my students what they want to be. Many hands would shoot up in the air with enthusiasm with answers such as “Doctor!”, “Lawyer!”, “Dancer!”, etc. 

Seldom do we ask our students this question: “WHO do you want to become?” 

I believe that cultivating who we are is what will help us grow in wisdom, kindness and respect for each other and our surroundings. The “what” (your career aspirations) is essential, but as we all know, that can continue to shift and change, and it’s not something that is guaranteed to be a part of who you are. What happens when you lose your job? What happens when you are still an aspiring academic, like me, who is unsure of her footing in her career? What is my identity when I feel as though I am in the in-between? Not quite x, y, z yet but always looking towards the future to define who I am? 

I believe that whether it is you are already working in your dream job or still looking or unhappy with your job, the one thing you can work on and remains within you is who you are as a person; how you treat people in your surroundings. When you are a barista or a waitress as you are waiting to become a teacher (like most undergrad students I teach who are in the position of trying to find out what they want to be), I often remind them: who you are remains the same whether or not you become a teacher yet. It’s not like once you reach your goals, and suddenly you are also filled with respect, care, joy and kindness towards yourself and others. 

You are who you are at any given moment in time.
I think that’s a very powerful and important thing to get our students to understand and ponder.

When we dismiss the cultivation of who we are starting from childhood, it makes children grow up into adults who are wired for material success only and the pressure to brand themselves into something marketable to be deemed a worthy and desirable person in society. I have seen and witnessed this pressure happen way too often. It starts from when they are children, and we consistently put it into their heads to think about WHAT to be so much so that by the time they are in undergrad, they get into panic mode and pressure themselves to figure out fast what to do after they graduate. The result is witnessing students coming into my classes breaking down and explaining to me that they are just so tired and pressured; they don’t even know why they are going to school, who they are and how much of a failure they often feel.

I am not saying that thinking about your career aspirations is not essential, if anything, I am the queen of continually thinking about my work. But in the midst of chasing what you want to be, I think it’s about time we start to cultivate and live the question, “WHO do you want to become?” 

In a time of educational crisis with all that’s happening in our surroundings, we might ask ourselves, what happened to us? Why are there so many power hungry people who use power for all the wrong/selfish reasons? We have conditioned children long ago (with no ill intent) to want to encourage them to be all that they are by getting them to focus on what they want to be that we forget to nurture who they are and who they are becoming. The result is that sometimes children grow up to become adults who will do anything to get what they want and what career they want to have with no regard for their individual and collective humanity.

Marianne Williamson once said,
“Love, not money should be humanity’s bottom line. Who if not us will stand up to say this?
Who if not us to lead
the revolution in consciousness
that is humanity’s next step?”

I encourage you to start asking and living this question with yourself AND with your students, “Who are you? Who do you want to become?” 
You might get answers like:

I want to be kind.
I want to be respectful.
I want to be caring.
I want to be free.
I want to be loving.

Good then. You’re off to a good start. There is a lot more work to be done, but the dialogue has begun.

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