Roles

Remember back in maybe high school or college when you did icebreakers and group exercises? Or maybe a time management course that was designed to make you use time more efficiently? One of questions I remember being asked often was "how do you define yourself," and the way you answered was typically to describe the various roles you played in life.

The purpose of the exercise was to make you aware of the myriad directions in which life pulls you, and the various responsibilities you have. The answers back then might have been student, friend, daughter, or advocate. These days, I suppose my assumed roles would be mother, wife, lawyer, daughter, housekeeper, organizer, chauffeur, etc. But for some odd reason, when I tried to do that exercise recently just for the hell of it, the first - and pretty much only - thing that sounded right to me was athlete. The rest of the roles, while true and obviously important, are my roles to other people. My life feels too complex these days to fit into neat little boxes the way it used to, and I suppose that is probably a good thing. The roles morph into each other these days, just as work crosses the line into home sometimes, or daughter and mother clash on occasion when I don't agree with my kids' grandmother.

But the one thing that has been true for nearly as long as I can remember is that I define myself as an athlete. That falls into its own little box and, while it has to be balanced with everything else, involves something that is utterly mine and mine alone. It forms what I think of as part of my baseline, the very core of what makes me who I am. There may be a few other things that fall into this category (I can think of one or two right now), but I don't feel as strongly about any of the other ones. Maybe that's a selfish mindset, but it's what makes sense to me at this point in my life.

I'm guessing most people have something like this in their life - athletics, music, science, some interest that has transcended the years and helps form the baseline of who they are. For some of my friends, I feel like I could guess what interest they might have; for others, I have no idea. I wonder if that is a comment on how well I really know them as friends? And indicative that maybe I could spend some time getting to know them better? Anyway, this was one of the topics that kept me awake during my run this afternoon, so I thought I'd share.