No Title
You are more than your title - more than your job - more the perception of yourself others have created. Your title is not your identity; in fact, it says very little about who you actually are. You are your actions & your personality - everything else is just a tool to help you discover exactly what those are.
Titles Do Not Define Us
Okay, so they do allow others to more easily determine who we are & what we do based on our job descriptions & roles in society, but they do not define who we actually are. They do not define us because we are not one single category - not just a teacher, language learner, writer. These are merely labels that assist others in understanding who we are without actually getting to know us - they’re like the title of a book. They give you a very small taste of what you can expect within, but it would impossible to actually describe the entire book on the cover.
Titles Are Only the Beginning
They are only labels, and if we define ourselves based entirely on these titles, we will never know the depth of each & every person that lies within - we can buy all the books we want, but if only read the covers, all the knowledge & life within them remains unknown. If we read a book once, we’ve attempted to understand, but if we read it multiple times & interact with it by discussing it, we access an entirely new level of depth & understanding - the more we allow ourselves to truly listen & see ourselves & others, the more intricately we can understand not just those people, but the world around us.
The Functionality of Titles
Of course, we don’t necessarily need or want to read every book out there, & titles can help us narrow our search, but they are simply that - a tool to guide us as we begin searching for content. They are a surface-level description of who we are & how we live, but nothing more. Our depth - the uniqueness of each individual cannot be categorized by a single word or phrase.
Beyond the Title
So why then, do we cling so fiercely to these labels?
We know we are more. We want to be more. We absolutely are more than just a title.
Yet we’re afraid of this unknown because it goes beyond what has already been discovered. It’s a place of our own, & it’s beautiful & amazing, but it’s frightening & challenging to access because in does not yet exist in the constructs of our society. It’s always been possible, but only those courageous enough, dedicated enough, eccentric enough will access it.
