My Career is Not My Identity

Reflecting on how people in Spain DGAF about what you do for a living

“What do you do?”

The famous conversation opener at any social gathering in the US. A classic “get-to-know-you” question.

What do you do? What do you dedicate ~40 hours of every week to? As if that were what defines you. Your whole identity reduced to your job title.

If you live in a culture that idolizes career status, defining yourself by your career is a natural consequence. That certainly was the case for me in the years I was living in the US. People tended to judge my success based on my job. Since I worked at a popular startup and made good money for my age, I was successful in the context of the California backdrop I was living in.

Instinctively some part of me questioned this logic. But there was no denying that a superficial pride lived there as well when people reacted so positively to my response to the ubiquitous prompt.

Photo by ian dooley on Unsplash

Losing Your Identity

A few years ago I attended a yoga retreat in Spain after I’d already been living here for a while. I was actively aware of many cultural differences at that point. But some differences had become so “new normal” for me that I’d become oblivious to the change.

The retreat was a mix of Spaniards and foreigners living in Spain. At the group dinner, there was an American girl in her 20s who had just moved to Sevilla for a one-year teaching English sabbatical, after having spent a few years working at a big corporate company in her hometown.

Someone asked her how she was finding her first few months in Spain.

“You know what’s funny? No one asks me what I do here. I’ve stepped away from my career in the US and I’m now teaching English, but it doesn’t seem to matter to anyone what I’m doing.” she shared, “And the hardest part of it is I feel like I’ve lost my identity in a sense. Work was the center of who I was. Without that, who am I?”

Her words struck me. I’d completely forgotten this was a realization I had shortly after moving here too. From day one when I landed in Sevilla to now, no one asks me about my job and people hardly talk about their jobs.

When I moved here I left a “successful career” in the US to come and teach English in Sevilla. Teaching English was the only way I could get a visa and live here long-term. I didn’t feel passionate about teaching English but it was a means to an end. Taking that step, quitting a good job to do something entirely different was incredibly tough. The cultural perception of success à la my career was deeply instilled in me. Pair that with the fact that many people around me were vocal about if I was sure what I was doing was right.

“You’re leaving your job to teach English in Spain?” they questioned.

When I arrived in Spain I was surprised to find that the topic of what I did for a living was a stranger to most conversations. On a list of 100 conversation topics at a Spanish party, career didn’t even make the list. No one cared what I did for a living. Because in Spain, living isn’t about work.

What the young girl at the retreat had touched on was a compelling insight. She felt like she had lost her identity. Coming from an American culture that values so highly what you do for a living and jumping into a pool of profound indifference towards what you do was naturally jarring for her.

Later in the year, I connected with this American girl again. I asked her how she was doing. She shared that that loss she felt had been the impetus for a redefining of her identity. While it was hard at first, the joyful milieu of Spain had inevitably wrapped itself around her. She felt a new sense of self.

A Catalyst for Redefining the Self

Who are you without your job being the defining piece of your life? What better way to find out than by breaking away from the cultural membrane you may not even realize surrounds you, preventing you from living beyond the restraints of those formerly invisible, impenetrable walls?

As you venture beyond those walls, you find yourself in an untouched galaxy of possibilities. The definitions you once lived by have no meaning here. So you do the only thing you can do, seek new definitions.

The transition from living in a culture where career is number one to the Spanish culture was surprisingly a welcome change for me. My life was suddenly filled with color. I had time to do things after work every day. Everyone around me wanted to do things after work every day (in part because it’s so much easier to meet up with someone when it’s a 10-minute walk instead of a 30-minute drive). I wasn’t exhausted from work. I wasn’t waiting for the weekends (nor am I now, even though I’m back to working a full-time job). This radical change wasn’t so much a loss as an introduction to a whole new world.

“Multiplicity of perspectives is essential to making us who we are. Identity is always a two-way street—created from the inside out and the outside in.” - Esther Perel

Living in a culture so different from my own provides a multiplicity of perspectives that continue to shape who I am. I take the information in, assimilate it, and decide whether I want to redefine a piece of myself based on that new information or let it blow away with the wind.

Perhaps life is an ongoing identity evolution. Emotional, physical, relational, and cultural catalysts spark realizations and awarenesses. And maybe that’s the point, our identities are not static. They’re fluid, malleable, and ever-changing. Trying to tie our identity to our career ultimately becomes a heavy anchor behind the vessel of life that is always trying to move forward, running on the fuel of change.

If we embrace change through immersing ourselves in new experiences, whether it be moving to another country or simply taking a dance class, we can perhaps more effortlessly keep pace with the energetic flow of life.

Working to Live, Not Living to Work

There is an entire universe of life outside work in Spain. Everyone is living their lives prioritizing the “outside work life”, with work being the obligatory filler instead of work being the driving force, with the rest being the filler.

Just take a look at any local café in the morning, whether it be a Monday, Wednesday, or Friday. The café overflows with people, not an empty table in sight. People value taking a moment to pause and connect in their workday, instead of ordering a coffee to go at a Starbucks drive-thru to get to their desk as quickly as possible.

There’s also a levity to connecting with people on everything except work. I bask in those refreshing rays of conviviality that radiate through conversations here. Leave work conversations where they belong, at work. The tacit competitiveness that I sometimes felt in the US does not exist here. A pressure I didn’t know was there has been liberated through this experience.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not immune to talking about my job. I love my job. And I do talk about it with some Spanish friends, and certainly with my American friends at home. I’m not sitting here saying let’s never talk about our careers. I’m more reflecting on the value of examining our identities outside the realm of work, defining ourselves not by work but by who we are underneath that. Perhaps who we are is best seen, felt, and learned through being with and connecting with others.

It doesn’t need to be black or white, talk about work, or don’t talk about work. The emphasis to me is on the element of exploration. Being open to and actively exploring the nuances. Thanks to Spain I am continually prompted to do so.