About us?

What have you learned about yourself? In the 8 or 80 years you’ve been alive, what do you consider to be “you”? On what do we base our sense of self? How do we see each other? How do we behave? What makes us angry? But what makes us happy? Are we just a compilation of past events that we have participated in? Are we, as the old Linkin Park song goes, “All we are is all we’ve ever done”? Or are we the now, the present, the behaviors and attitudes that we currently have? In a sense, who are we?

I know this is a strange and seemingly difficult question to ask, where we usually fill in the blank with descriptive details that describe things about us, such as being a mother, being a firefighter, enjoying painting, singing, running, or dancing. When we ask others, or when we are asked, to say who we are, we tend to stick with labels like these, but those labels are what we do, not who we are. We are not titles hanging on a wall, or money in a bank account, or even the accumulation of knowledge stored in the lobes of our brain. So if we are not what we do, and we are not how we do it, then who are we?

I found myself fascinated with this idea of ​​how we determine who we are and how fluid it is as the days go by. Because of this, I asked others to describe me. What followed seemed to be a list of achievements, ranging from advanced degrees to years spent in a profession, with some even mentioning the profession itself. It was there that I asked myself: “Are we what we achieve?”

Are people in the medical profession just doctors, people who teach just teachers, or people who build just construction workers? Are we just a laundry list of awards, achievements, titles, and years lived? Maybe we are just a running total of what our days have ended. So, am I just a high school graduate with a history of dropping out?

I don’t think so. So I asked more people I came into contact with to describe me to their friends. This is where I’ve heard words like loving, caring, fun, hard-working, athletic, and even “a once-in-a-lifetime person.” Why do we describe ourselves based on achievements, but others describe us based on behaviors?

I just attended a teleconference with Native agencies across the state of Alaska, when we were getting focused, and we seemed to be running out of ideas on how we could work together to help issues affecting Alaska Native communities. We end the conference on a blank note; no one had any ideas. As we sat in the room, 4 in all, with our heads bowed and the shame of feeling that we had let down the young man who was pouncing on us, someone in the room finally spoke.

“We focus on external learning.” In our classrooms and our homes, we tell our young people that grades, degrees, and what they know is what makes them successful. “We spend so much time forcing memorization into their brains as if that’s going to teach our children something other than how to regurgitate someone else’s thoughts. We place such a high value on external knowledge that it seems like this is all we focus on.” “No. To teach our young people to be good people, we don’t teach them to care, or to love, or to show empathy. We don’t teach them to learn internally, only externally. That’s our problem.”

Perhaps this is why we describe ourselves as what we do and have achieved, rather than how we behave. Our society places so much importance on outside learning that it seems almost wrong to do anything other than focus on it. We praise those who rise to the top of the food chain, who seem to know everything, who make a lot of money, but is this what makes us successful in life? Is this where we should learn?

In his Ted Talk, “What Makes a Good Life? Lessons from the Longest Study of Happiness,” Robert Waldinger shares how in a survey of goals, 80% of young adults said being rich is their number one, and more than 50% said that being famous is a life goal. As Waldinger shares the “Harvard Study of Adult Development,” which is a study of 724 men throughout every stage of their life. This study examined their levels of happiness year after year. Beginning in 1938, this study followed two groups of men, a group of Harvard graduates and a group of Boston’s poorest and most disadvantaged families. When the subjects were in their 80s, the researchers looked back at age 50 to see if they could find a factor that directly correlated with health and aging. “People who were the most satisfied in their relationships in their 50s were the healthiest in their 80s.”

So what correlates with happiness? As the subjects began to reach the end of their lives, the researchers compiled the results of who was leading a happier life and what was the common denominator between them. “(Despite the fact that many of the subjects listed wealth as a priority in their adult phase), time and time again, our study has shown that the people who did best were the people who leaned on relationships with family, with friends, with the community,” Waldinger tells us.

Why do we give so much importance to what we achieve above everything else? If studies like this show the correlation between building relationships with those you love and happiness, why do we never seem to listen? Why do we feel we should chase what the magazine cover sells as the perfect life? Is this a lesson they are meant to learn the hard way? Are we destined to sell our lives in a deal with the devil to seek fame and wealth, only to realize that what would have made us whole is those around us?

I am no stranger to this deal. I have learned many things about myself. I learned that I have a soft spot for my ego, and that the possibility of being the best, the biggest, attracts me like an addiction. I learned that I craved attention this way and sometimes I still do. I learned that he was so focused on what David Brooks calls, “Resume Virtues,” which are the things we accomplish that sell us in the marketplace. I came out of a good trip, with bad intentions. I sold my pilgrimage under the guise that I was doing it to help others, when in fact the lure of being a savior had me hooked. I sold myself as a hero at first, a kind of martyr in search of salvation, thinking that I was among the masses.

I was wrong. Although I did good and grew as a human being, I did it for the wrong reasons. He wanted to be the one they talked about at high school football games. I allowed a sense of pride, the need for others to know me, to make the decisions. I learned that this was not a way to live. I’ve learned that I find peace by developing, as David Brooks again coined, “Praise Virtues,” which are the characteristics they talk about at our funeral. I learned that while satisfying the Ego’s sense of accomplishment is tempting, it’s an empty booty that only leaves us begging for more.

This entire journey was for me to label myself a success, but as we all realize as we age, success in life is defined by those who live it, not those outside of it.

Pursuing fame and wealth is not necessarily a bad thing, but making it your only goal and your proposed key to happiness is. Jim Carrey tells us, “I think everyone should get rich and famous and do everything they ever dreamed of so they can see that’s not the answer.”

Then, what are we? I know this writing took a detour off course, but what do we define as us? I think this falls under what we define as success. The fact that society favors outside learning and success on the big stage does not mean that this has to be our ultimate goal. If we fall for this, perhaps that is why we declare ourselves as what we have achieved.

Never settle for a life that doesn’t fulfill your sense of purpose, but don’t find yourself making empty deals with life. Happiness, as it seems, is based on the fact that success is a measure that we establish internally. Therefore, if we change what we define as success to something we can control (since wealth and fame are often a collision of coincidence and luck), then we can change the sense of self that we define for ourselves.

Regardless of how you feel about this idea, the beauty of it is that you get to decide what success is for you, and therefore who you are.