What do you do for a living?
they ask me, as if it’s the all-defining aspect of my being. Why not:
What would your soul look like if you removed its mask? What is the first thing you think about in the morning and the last before your eyes flutter closed to rest? What demons do you dance with and what are you doing to kick them off the dance floor? What were you taught that doesn’t serve you and what are you doing to change the lesson plan for future generations? What are the things that make you cry out of sorrow or bliss? What tragedies have you encountered and what appeared when you made it to the other side? What are the biggest mistakes you’ve made and what have you done to contribute to this world? In what ways do you feel oppressed and what are you doing to overcome that oppression? What was it that first led you to believe you were lesser than and how do you assure yourself that it isn’t so? What makes your heart speak and what silences it? Instead of what you do for a living, tell me; what makes you feel like you are truly living? What is it that causes you to continue turning the pages of this beautiful, messy, harmonious, crazy chronicle called life?
Because when all the money means nothing and you’re seventy- something and settling down for the last years of it all, that will be what you define yourself by. Even if you haven’t found that something yet, keep turning the pages, for all you know it could be in the next paragraph.
