Role vs Identity

Just some thoughts to close out my day. So often in life, we become our work. Or we become our hobbies. We, in a way, get addicted. We identify ourselves with the things that we do, the things we accomplish, and most commonly, our failures. This is a dangerous path to go down that many of us (I included, currently) are tempted down. We identify ourselves by our roles.

Role versus identity. Are the two the same?

No.

I wouldn't say "my role is a male", I would say I "identify as a male" because my male-ness is inherent to ME. It is part of my essence, and who I am at my core. Identity goes even further, to say that I am a male PERSON.

Roman philosopher, Boethius, says that a person is an "individual substance of a rational nature." There is a LOT to unpack here. First you look at the term individual, and you get a sense of uniformity and concreteness. Individual = one and there is something strong about the number one. "one ring to rule them all", "one bill for all services provided" (gotta throw some GDS lingo in here). In philosophy, 'substance' is generally thought of as the thing that is foundational to what something is, like atoms are to everything. Rationality seperates mankind from all other life by our ability to think, reflect, and make our own decisions. Finally, nature. The essence of something- its core. So a person, put simply, is single being with the powers of thought, and the ability to choose. This is our identity.

Our roles, are as a student, salesperson, teacher, mother, father, you name it. There are SO many roles that we have. Our roles, in my own definition, are consistent actions we choose to engage with others around us. My role as a sales intern is to consistently call on potential prospects to see if there is a way I can help them. However, there are so many roles that I have beyond work (friend, fiance, son, brother, parin) that I can't place my entire ESSENCE onto one. All my roles portray who I am, but do not make up who I am.

If you've made it down here, as the famous quote says "the whole is greater than the sum of its parts." Your roles are the parts, and your identity is the whole. Just some thoughts for the day.