The Definition
“Our past may shape us, but it doesn’t define us.”
Image credit @nervum
Our past adventures and challenges don’t define us. Still, they shape who we are today, allowing us to be better or bitter, generous or greedy, kind or cruel, compassionate or confronting, open-hearted or walled-off. We get to choose the definition by which we will be known and how we relate to one another.
There are times when others have an opportunity to provide a definition of who we are. I remember working as a hospice social worker several years ago and was impressed that the hospice policy was to celebrate the totality of an elderly person’s life. Pictures and accomplishments were posted throughout the room so the staff could celebrate who this patient was and continued to be. The album of that person’s life wasn’t of a frail and weakened older person but of a grandfather and beloved husband who played in the symphony, composed music, and taught others. He might have been portrayed in a different and uncomplimentary light in another setting. But here, he was remembered and valued.
A snapshot of a given moment or time in history can present an erroneous picture of who one is, however. I still have a hard time forgiving myself for my reactivity when talking with a doctor following my husband’s cancer surgery. I lashed out at the surgeon as I learned my husband was being taken to the ICU. We were only there for a second opinion after all, yet, at the last minute, my husband consented to a surgery he had previously indicated he wasn’t going to have. I was unprepared for such a drastic turn of events, distraught with fear, alone and scared. Jay had made it known when we were traveling to the appointment that he feared permanent disability with such a surgery, yet here we were. I was channeling Jay’s fear and my own as I lashed out at the surgeon, who, as it turns out, had saved my husband’s life. It wasn’t my finest moment.
I cannot and will not, though, let rare moments like that define who I am….just as a cancer diagnosis doesn’t define who one is, nor does one’s employment or where one lives, because we are more than any one of those things. If my definition of myself is based on where I work, and I retire or lose my job, then that gets very challenging to manage. If my definition of myself is based on where I live, then I relocate, then I may struggle. If I define myself primarily by a medical diagnosis, it doesn’t accurately reflect who I am.
I am appreciative of one group participant who always begins her introduction to the group with, “First of all, I’m a wife, mother, and grandmother,” and continues to share her cancer diagnosis. It’s clear the diagnosis doesn’t define who she is – it’s a part of who she is, but not all of who she is.
George Eliot’s quote, “It’s never too late to be who you might have been,” fills me with hope and reminds me that nothing is static. Everything is fluid and constantly changing because who I was yesterday, last year, or the last decade is not who I am today. And that’s a good thing since every new day is an opportunity to start anew and write the script of one’s life.
Marie Forleo, named by Oprah as a thought leader for the next generation, shares this: “Maybe it’s time to update how you define yourself.” Nearly all of us update our wardrobes and our homes at one time or another. Maybe it’s past time for a personal update. Whatever our current circumstances, our negative or positive history, we can choose the definition of who we are.