We Are What We Do (standard:Editorials, 1177 words)
Author: J P St. Jullian	Added: Nov 08 2002	Views/Reads: 3592/2380	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Is there any real harm in trading our personal identities for our work identities?

Click here to read the first 75 lines of the story

do know and interact positively with each other.  On the other hand, 
not every work place is a friendly and inviting playground.  No one 
knows this better than I.  Still, in most cities around the country, 
one may know more about the people they pass on their way to their desk 
or work area than they know about the people they pass on their way 
around the block where they reside. 

This whole thing isn't so different from the experiences of the
immigrants who flocked to this country in the 19th and 20th centuries.  
When they came to this country they still identified themselves as 
members of their own ethnic groups, such as Italian, Polish, Irish, 
African, and so on.  I suppose this was a natural thing.  They sought 
out and assumed connections with people from and of their own ethnic 
backgrounds and groups.  But today most have updated that experience by 
replacing ethnic neighborhoods with work places; the places where we 
find our sense of being, our sense of place. 

I have traveled much of the world and interacted with hundreds, even
thousands of  people from different ethnic and racial backgrounds.  
From those travels and interactions I gained much knowledge of people.  
I am not an authority on demographics, people, or any of the sciences, 
but I do have a very reasonable degree of common sense and education.  
While I don't consider it to be massively disruptive to shift our sense 
of community or neighborhood in the manners cited above, I do feel that 
it could be a grave mistake to shift identities.  There is a definite 
relationship between the two, for the balance has already tipped, and 
so many of us seem increasingly dependent upon our work to define our 
sense of self. 

When one's office becomes one's new neighborhood, and one's professional
title becomes one's new ethnic tag, then how does one separate oneself 
from one's job? What happens if one loses his or her job and can't find 
the same work elsewhere? Does anyone truly want their self-worth to be 
something that can only be measured in the market place? I think not.  
What's the solution? 

As long as corporate America continues along this path there will be no
viable solution to this dilemma, if dilemma it really is.  It's more or 
less an individual phenomenon.  I believe that in these new, and yet 
emerging communities, it will become harder and harder to discern who 
we are without saying what we do.  It will eventually become impossible 
to define our “sense of self” without determining our “sense of place.” 



Tweet