Who Are You? (Part 1)

Who are you? Most of the time, people ask this question more tactfully, “What do you do?” Or, if in an arena providing more time, they may say, “Tell me about yourself.” But the quest remains the same: to find out who you are.

We craft elaborate answers to these three words—who, are, you?—and hang data from each serif of every letter. I’m a doctor, a lawyer, an Indian chief. I’m a mason, a mother, a machinist; a parson, a podiatrist, a philanthropist; a dancer, a debutante, a developer; a queen, a quadruplet, a Monday-morning quarterback; a general, a guru, a gypsy at heart.

And we continue to sophisticate our identities with qualifiers: I’m a doctor of dermatology, a lawyer in Louisiana, or I am Chief of the Cherokees. But while there appears to be honor in most of what we have listed thus far, there are those who if asked and were honest, would say, “I am nobody.”

We tend to plot our identity somewhere on a spectrum between success and failure. Acumen, accolades, and acceptance are used to determine who you are. Money and material possessions map your identity location on the success-failure spectrum.

Quickly take inventory. Where do you perceive your identity to be on the spectrum?

Next: Where do you think God has you on this spectrum?