Tag Archives: identity

Vintage eyeglasses

Seeing the Person, Not Just the Money

Identity and Vocation, Missing Our Significance – and Others', , ,

In my first job after college, I wrote grant applications for a major orchestra. This work required me to stay knowledgeable about local philanthropy, so I once attended a panel discussion featuring several of the city’s leading donors, discussing their priorities for giving and their preferences for how to be approached for a gift. The room was filled with other grant writers, major gift officers, development directors, and others, waiting to discover how to tap into all that wealth.

Most of the panelists were in their fifties or sixties; their giving came after a successful career provided them with the means to give. One donor, however, was only a few years older than I was. The scion of an old and wealthy family, she had inherited millions in her early twenties, upon the unexpected death of her parents. While she spoke strongly about causes she supported, what jumped out most to me was her frustration with fundraisers who hadn’t done their homework, approaching her for gifts to organizations she would never support, ignoring the clear guidelines of her family’s foundation, and, worst of all, confusing her family with another local dynasty with a similar name:

“They don’t even know who I am!”

At the time, her comments struck me as incredibly arrogant. I couldn’t relate to her at all. I was on the opposite end of the ask, trying to get her to write a large check so that I could justify my low-paying, barely-making-ends-meet job, while she (I imagined) lived a carefree Scrooge McDuck-style life. She was right. I couldn’t care less who she was: I just wanted her money. Continue reading Seeing the Person, Not Just the Money →

A display of masks

What Roles Do You Play at Work?

Challenges and Frustrations, Image and Call in Daily Life, ,

Last week, I wrote about the how the roles we play at work can influence our self-identity, focusing on a couple of “bad guy” roles like the one played by Wreck-It Ralph. But that’s not the only role that can have a negative influence on our self-image.

Roles We Play

The Drone: Doing the same thing, over and over, day after day, can drain you of energy and creativity, especially when you have little control over the details of your work. Your mental and physical exhaustion can spill over into the rest of your life, and your attitude can become one of simply enduring the time you have left. Once, while working a particular difficult and tedious one summer in college, I kept myself entertained – if you can call it that – by mentally calculating how much money I was making every minute I worked and keeping a running tab on my pay. Maybe that’s fine for a summer job, but what happens when you’ve been doing that for years?

The Doormat: Like the Drone, the Doormat has little power over his work – at least, any power to say “no” about any part of his work. When any conflict arises, the Doormat expects to simply roll over and allow the other side to win. It might be the boss, customers, coworkers, clients – it doesn’t really matter. If the Doormat has any opinions, he’s expected to keep them to himself and say “yes” to whatever is being proposed. Continue reading What Roles Do You Play at Work? →

Wrestling, kayfabe, and only labels

Work, Identity, and Wreck-It Ralph

Identity: Knowing Who We Are, Work and Vocation, , ,

In 2012, Wreck-It Ralph joined The Incredibles[1] as an animated film that deals with those most adult of themes: vocation, work, and the meaning of life. Where The Incredibles deals with one’s choice of work and the freedom to use one’s gifts, Wreck-It Ralph deals with the complex relationships between image, identity, and vocation .

Wreck-It Ralph is a video game villain who spends his days destroying an apartment building that is then relentlessly rebuilt by the game’s hero, Fix-It Felix Jr. Ralph feels trapped in his role and longs for something more. In the brilliant opening scene, Ralph attends a meeting of Bad-Anon, a support group for video game bad guys. Attempting to help Ralph see himself in a better light, a zombie tells him, “Good, bad — only labels.”

Work Identity and Self Identity

This might sound like a position of moral relativism, but none of these “villains” are truly bad in a moral sense. They’re entertainers, playing a role given to them by the game designers. Being a “bad guy” is best understood as part of the video game kayfabe. Kayfabe is the depiction of staged story lines of professional wrestling, in which some wrestlers are “good” (“faces,” as in “babyfaces”) and some are “bad” (“heels”). They are all actors, not actual heroes or villains. In the ring, two wrestlers may act like die-hard enemies. In reality, they are coworkers in the same wrestling company, perhaps even good friends. Their wrestling personas have been assigned to them by their manager, all as part of the entertainment. Continue reading Work, Identity, and Wreck-It Ralph →