How Do You Define Yourself?

Like an employment or loan application, you state your name, address, city, state and zip code. Is this all there is?

What is it about you that make you who you are?

Obviously, like a grave marker, there is the date of birth and death. Defining dates but there must be more.

After the basics are the questions of your employment. Who do you work for? How long have you worked there? Where did you work before that?

That is easy until it gets to ‘titles’ and ‘salary’. Both of those define you.

Who is your father? Who is your mother? What about their parents? What they did to bring you into this world and raise you influenced you and helps to define you.

Are you married? Do you have children? Questions that usually come from family also define you. Are your children home bred or adopted?

If you apply to one of those online dating services, the profile might become personal. Are you a good kisser?  What is your favorite sexual position? Maybe that should stay behind closed doors?

What is your skin color? Hair color? Eye color? All these define you. Just ask the police filing descriptions in a crime case.

What is your faith? What church do you attend? Is this prying? It doesn’t seem to be by the news headlines. Does what you believe define you?

How is your health? It is a subject shared with friends, neighbors and even strangers in the grocery checkout line. Serious injury, apparent or not, or the common cough or backache defines us. We love to share our ailments with others. It seems to bring us closer together.

What about your home? Are those roses planted? Do you cut your own lawn? Do you match your neighbors or not? Our living arrangements define us.

Could go on and on for details like the rash on your butt or that strange smell you wake up to or if you drive your kids to school or make them walk or how many times you make the bed?

As teenagers, our pimples, our shoes or how we danced defined us?

Many of these definitive qualities change through the years. The hair will get lighter and thinner, the fashions will become looser, the pace will become slower and the vision will start to fade. The definition of who we are does not easily show our inner core.

For each of us are individuals with different likes and dislikes and taste and feelings. That is what makes us each unique and interesting.

Our outside shell, warts and all, cannot describe what brings tears to our eyes or anger to our heart. Our experiences and our interactions with others cannot be shown in our disguise. Our formatting due to family and work requirements only shows we obeyed the repetitive propaganda.

Don’t look in the mirror.