If you could be anyone, who would you be?

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Happy Sunday and thank you for opening this week’s #TheLifeofJLOWE newsletter - all the way from Utila, Honduras! 🏝️ 

I’ve been here since the day after my birthday, and just completed my Advanced Open Water Scuba Diver Certification! If you’ve been around you’d know that I recently learnt how to scuba dive in Miami, and now I’m here on this island of scuba divers, diving often and exploring the second largest barrier reef in the world next to the Great Barrier Reef.

Meeting new people on an island

As I meet new people, I can’t help but reflect on the questions that people ask when first meeting and how geography and context affects them. Back in America, inevitably, one of the first questions you ask someone new as an adult is “what do you do?”. It’s very career-centered - unsurprisingly so - and I think that’s part of the reason why I had trouble staying in my finance job.

I couldn’t fully identify with that career/field as a part of who I am, and every time I was asked that question, it almost felt like uncomfortable to have to take on all the assumptions that come with that field when meeting new people when I didn’t really identify with them. 

Here in Utila, unsurprisingly as well, one of the first questions I’ve been asked by new people is “what diving course are you doing?” or “how long are you here for?” and in the past few days I’ve rarely been asked a question centered around my career.

Now I’m not saying this as any profound discovery; obviously on an island off the coast of Honduras, you’re not striking up a conversation about work because most if not all people are here on vacation or as a part of their world travels. However, when reflecting on it, I certainly began to think about how fulfilling it’s been to be able to introduce myself as a writer or a musician rather than as a bank employee.

It’s starting to feel more aligned with how I see myself and the assumptions people make of me after a first impression are likely more accurate. 

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How do you introduce yourself?

The question to ask myself after this reflection, though, is whether I actually care about the assumptions people make about me, and further, whether what I do as a career even matters to or affects anyone but myself. Every time I meet a new person, it’s a new opportunity to reflect on how I want that person to perceive me.

Meeting new people in a remote place though, outside of the usual context in which you meet new people - you become a bit more aware of how you choose to introduce yourself. 

You quickly realize that you have to choose to prioritize what matters to you, and that a self-introduction doesn’t have to center around your career or how you make a living, but can center around where you’re from, what you enjoy or how you prefer to spend your time. You realize that you’re in a space where nobody knows anything about you, and you could truly be anyone, so who do you want to be? 

Or better yet - in a space where you can be anyone - who are you?

Tackling that existential question

In the past few months since quitting my corporate job, resetting and realigning myself, I’ve been able to grow away from the question of “what do you do?” as a part of my identity and conversation, and begin to recognize the importance of really understanding who I am, how I treat people, how I make people feel and how I feel about myself, over the assumptions I think people make of me because of my career/job. 

Funnily enough, since quitting my job, when I meet new people, I’ve stopped asking them what they do too. It’s funny, because I stopped asking not only because I’m realizing that it’s not that important, but more because I don’t want them to ask me the question back, and force me to explain where I am in life right now since quitting my job. 😂 

It’s super interesting to think about the fact that there’s more often than not a disconnect between those two things - who you are (what you enjoy) and what you do - and that it almost seems like life is about the pursuit of aligning the two.

Society hasn’t made it easy to align the two, and it is often seen as a privilege when you’re able to. Being away from it all has made me realize how unfortunate that is, in a life that’s so short and precious.

Conclusion

Meeting new people is always a great thing, but one of the many reasons I think travelling to new places is so important is because you get a chance to meet new people outside of your normal social context. When you get a chance to decide how you introduce yourself to new people with whom you have no mutuals, you begin to learn what it is that matters most to you and your own identity.

For me, travelling helped with understanding that because I realized that I didn’t identify with what was once my career. The size of the blessing in my life to be able to even attempt to pursue something that I love as a career is never lost on me, and I’m always grateful for the family, friends and life that I’ve been dealt.

The opportunity to see if I can align what I love and what I do is, as I mentioned earlier, a real privilege, and I think if you find yourself with an opportunity to do that, you should grab at it wholeheartedly.

More than that though, the next person that you meet - even if it’s a new mutual friend - take it as an opportunity to do some self reflection. How are you introducing yourself, and what’s that person’s first impression of you? Does it align with how you view yourself, and what you think is important to your own definition of self?

It’s a journey that we will go through all throughout our lives, and the most beautiful part of it all is that you’re able to grow, change and continuously become better than the person that you were yesterday, and each day one step closer to the person that you want to be.

Life’s a journey, enjoy it! 😉 

Until next Sunday,
Justin