Heart Over Mind

This year, I turned 30–and I feel that my love has changed. The love I give, the love I take, the love for myself and my time–it feels different than what it was one decade ago. Not so much a crash-and-burn as in a mid-life crisis, but a delicate trip and fall from clumsy, feathered feet, only to catch myself ignited by the tiny flames of novel ideas other than those that once kept my head in the clouds. Is this the foundation of a new identity? Or is this just the same existence with a different cadence?

Although, to the unprepared eye, not much has changed. I still get caught off guard when I meet someone so thoroughly invested in a singular project, they barely have room in their lungs to breathe a different objective. The same surprise applies to those with wholehearted contentment for their current state of being–what does one dream of after achieving that peace of mind? On the line between ambitious and content, I branch out like a bicycle spoke, constantly flirting with new avenues to find what feels right at the moment. Lobenstine called this a “Renaissance Soul”.¹

Mind Over Matter

Thinking deeply about the difference between identity and personality, I’m left with more questions than answers. Identity is how you perceive and describe yourself and your world, while personality is how you present yourself to the world.²  For most of the past decade, my identity has been tied to my career–and while it was a source of pride, it felt limiting to restrict my self-description to something that I am only 40 hours per week. When did work become more than a means for survival? When did it become something we embody? When trying something new, how much work is needed to be somebody? How do you balance between doing and being to grow into "what we have the potential to become?"³

What Matters?

If to do is to be and eventually become, then what do we plan to do today?

1. Margaret Lobenstine, The Renaissance Soul: Life Design for People with Too Many Passions to Pick Just One, (New York: Broadway Books, 2006).
2. Logan, “The Difference Between Identity & Personality,” All The Differences, last modified June 10, 2022, https://allthedifferences.com/identity-vs-personality/
3. Ann Allart Wilcock, “Reflections on Doing, Being, and Becoming,” Australian Occupational Therapy Journal 46, no. 1 (1999): 7, accessed May 7, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1046/j.1440-1630.1999.00174.x.