Years ago I wrote a longer piece on this, What “defines” you? This is the short version, plus what I’ve said since and what others said long before me, just in case you thought I believed I was inventing something here.
The question
What defines who you are?
Once, someone asked me, “What defines you?” I contemplated this question for a while because I’ve often heard people say that their identity is shaped by external factors, things others have done to them or for them.
Choices, not circumstances
People allow themselves to be defined by victimhood, or circumstances but often fail to understand that what truly defines who we are is so much more than that.
Choices. It all comes down to choices… Sometimes extremely difficult and life-altering ones, but choices nonetheless.
We all can choose to become the victim or to take responsibility for making our own way. We all have the power to rise above our past and become the people we want to be despite what others try to make of us.
Aristotle put it this way long before any of us:
…so too we become just by doing just acts, temperate by doing temperate acts, brave by doing brave acts.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, Book II, chapter 1 (W. D. Ross translation)
Rush Limbaugh put the same idea bluntly on his show:
A lot of people are legitimate victims of many things. But it doesn’t define you. It shouldn’t. It shouldn’t define the rest of your life.
Purpose
The good lord put me on this earth for a reason. I don’t pretend to know what that might be, but so far it has been one hell of a journey, and though some days each step is agony, and others are filled with wonder and love.
Each of us has a purpose, but not everyone finds it
Many of us never engage with that purpose and end up feeling lost and aimless. I believe that is by choice, and at times I catch myself making that same choice, and it leads to nothing good, let me tell you.
Getting back up
We all have things that wear us down, that we don’t share, that take us places that are unhealthy and destructive…
How you get back up and who you surround yourself with matters.
On the company we keep, Washington copied down Rule 56 as a boy:
Associate yourself with Men of good Quality if you Esteem your own Reputation; for ’tis better to be alone than in bad Company.
George Washington, Rules of Civility, No. 56 (spelling as written)
…These are the moments, where you find out who you are, when your faith in Christ is tested…
…Christ is my Lord and when things get too rough, I lay it all at his feet and ask for mercy & the strength to persevere.
Call someone, & reach out. This too shall pass…
And the Apostle Paul, in the King James wording:
Be not deceived: evil communications corrupt good manners.
I find occasions in my life that reinforce this point over and over, and yes, sometimes I have to re-learn the lesson, often painfully. Not everyone will make the choices I hope they will for their own lives, and at some point you have to be OK with that and move on. Their path doesn’t have to be yours, and the reverse is also true: the path you’ve built for yourself won’t work for others. You can’t spend yourself endlessly trying to put everyone on your path, because it is hypocritical to think our way is the only way.
What defines me
Here is how I answered it back then:
The challenges I take on define me.
The friendships I value define me.
My ethics define me.
How I respond to life’s challenges define me.
How I treat other people defines me.
Interestingly enough, I cannot say my faith defines me, it guides me…
The founders had a few things to say about this too. Thomas Jefferson, writing to his grandson Thomas Jefferson Randolph and looking back on his own youth:
…recollect the various sorts of bad company with which I associated from time to time, I am astonished I did not turn off with some of them, & become as worthless to society as they were. I had the good fortune to become acquainted very early, with some characters of very high standing, and to feel the incessant wish that I could ever become what they were.
Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Jefferson Randolph, November 24, 1808 (spelling as written)
And George Washington copied this out as a boy, as Rule 110 of his Rules of Civility:
Labour to keep alive in your Breast that Little Spark of Ce[les]tial fire Called Conscience.
George Washington, Rules of Civility, No. 110 (spelling as written; brackets are the editors’)
For the US military & all my brothers & sisters who made my service precious to me and shaped much of who I am today.
Today, some 12 years later, my direction is very different from what it was. I think that’s because, as we endure or drive toward the things we value, some of those goals may turn out to be temporary, and that’s OK. Maybe I shouldn’t chase the same things at 50 that I chased at 35.
So, what defines who you are?
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