Be Someone
A Reflection
"Be someone, not something."
I heard these words from a keynote speaker at a sales conference in the late 1990s. He was in his mid-50s, sharing stories about his life and career: lessons learned and regrets. I was in my mid-20s at the time. And while I understood the gist of the message, its deeper meaning didn't fully land until years later.
As the years passed and my career progressed, experience gave that message additional weight. Time and its teachings have a way of deepening insight, revealing channels of meaning we simply can't grasp until we've lived long enough to navigate them.
What he was saying was that family, friends, education, culture and tradition set us on a course powered by the tides of expectation: expectations of how we should dress, how we should communicate, what we should do for a living, how life should progress and even when and how we should retire. He was saying that we become something for two reasons: first, because drifting with the flow is easier than steering against it; and second, because of how the people around us respond to what they see, their reactions either validating us or discouraging us. Our title, our accomplishments and awards, our house, our car, our jewelry, our stuff, the bling of status and success. These are what I call the props of prosperity, and they provide the feedback that tells us we're doing OK, that we're a success.
Who You Go to Bed With.
Someone, on the other hand, is who you go to bed with. I'm not referring to your spouse, your partner or your furry friend. I'm referring to you: your thoughts and your motivations. The part of you that shows up in the stillness of the night and knows not only what you did, but why you did it, and whether your choices and actions align with who you really desire to be.
That may sound dramatic, like a reference to some violation of ethics or a criminal act, and for some, that may well be true. But I'm talking about the little parts of ourselves we surrender to conform, to mold ourselves into the space we were told we were expected to fit. You know what I'm referring to: the title you want but the job you don't, the activities you participate in but would have preferred to skip. Yes, even the people you associate with for influence but don't identify with or embrace.
His challenge carried two implications. That the difference is real, and its consequences compound over time. And that choosing someone over something requires conscious and disciplined effort, because the two are easy to confuse. The world actively reinforces and rewards the first and stays silent, and is often even critical, about the second. Titles come with parking spaces. Character and the pursuit of personal passion rarely come with anything you can hang on a wall, especially at first.
The drift toward something is seductive precisely because it feels like progress. Every prop we acquire is real: the title is real, the raise is real, the applause from family, friends and peers is real. So we mistake motion for meaning and applause for authenticity, and we hold the prescribed course, because changing it means resisting the pull of the tides and abandoning the comfortable habits of conformity. It means pausing long enough to ask where the current is carrying us, and whether it's genuinely the harbor we'd have chosen.
The Bill Comes Due.
The bill for that voyage arrives quietly, and always later. It comes as a heaviness you can't quite name. It comes as the small resentment you feel toward a life you supposedly chose. And it comes, eventually, as the pain of regret: the same regret I heard that speaker recite from the stage, for the version of himself he'd set aside so many times that, by his mid-50s, he wasn't sure he could find it again.
I know the pull well, because I straddled that line for years, sometimes letting occupation become identity, achievement replace meaning, and responsibility overtake reward. Just how far I'd drifted toward something, and away from someone, became clear to me several years ago, at a meditation conference. It was a period in which life and work had grown stressful, and I was looking for a way to relieve the pressure. During one session, we were asked to imagine joy. I couldn't. Worse yet, I didn't even know where to look. It was a sobering moment.
The title and the props were status and possessions, not identity or fulfillment.
I know my story is not unique. I am certain that most people, with some miles on life’s odometer, whether they want to acknowledge it or not, can identify with the feeling I described. We reach crosscurrents of opportunity and interest and have to make a choice: drift on, or summon the courage to come about and tack toward a horizon of our own choosing. Perhaps you're feeling the crosscurrents, even now.
Being Someone.
What I've come to believe is that being someone is quieter work, and it never really ends. It's the decision you make when no one is keeping score. It's the promise you keep that costs you something but reveals someone. It's the passion you pursue before it has earned anyone's permission, with the knowledge that it may never. None of it photographs well. None of it fits on a business card. But it is the only part of a life that doesn't depreciate.
I heard the distinction years ago, but it took decades to understand the difference and the work it requires. So I've started asking a different question than the one that steered my younger years. Not "What do I want to be?" but "Who do I want to be with, when the lights go down and the audience goes home?" Because that person, the one who knows not what you did but why, is the only company you're guaranteed to keep for the rest of your life.
That's the Seeker's Mindset: to keep asking who, not what, and why, not just how, until the answer becomes a life you'd choose again. Be someone, not something.
