I once came across an Oscar Wilde quote, that I have since found myself trying, very consciously, to reiterate.
“If you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it – that is your punishment, but if you never know, then you can be anything. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing – an actor or a writer- I am a person who does things, I act, I write and I never know what I am going to do next.” The idea is that the moment you try to become something, you inevitably begin to limit yourself to being that something. The beauty lies in being a verb rather than a noun. A noun is something you are, something that can be defined, categorised and neatly placed into a box. A verb, on the other hand, is something you do. It is constantly moving, changing, discovering and becoming. And perhaps, if we allow ourselves to be verbs, we leave enough room for life to surprise us with all the different versions of ourselves we haven’t met yet.
I think about this quite often when I look at the many things I find myself doing. I play football for the university team, despite the rather unfortunate fact that I cannot seem to find the back of the net, no matter how hard I try. I am a member of the Social Outreach Club, where I spend my weekends teaching children, and a student government representative, trying, in whatever little ways I can, to make learning a little easier for the people around me. I am also a proud Her Campus Krea writer, attempting to put some of the many thoughts that occupy my head into words and send them out into the world through blogs. A few senior friends have even lovingly labelled me a social butterfly, someone who seems to know everyone, makes friends wherever she goes and is always willing to lend a hand.
And yet, there are days when I am none of these things. Days when I would much rather be curled up in my room, away from conversations, responsibilities, footballs, meetings and people. Days when making peace with my thoughts is my only win of the day. On those days, I am not particularly social, productive, athletic, or even remotely interested in changing the world. I am just trying to be me. And that makes me wonder: if someone were to ask me to describe myself in one word, which version would I choose? Would I say I am an athlete, even though I struggle to score? A teacher, because I spend my weekends teaching? A leader, because I represent students? A writer, because I enjoy putting my thoughts into words? Or a social butterfly, because that is how some people have come to know me?
The funny thing is, none of these labels would necessarily be wrong. But none of them would be entirely right either. Maybe, that is the problem with labels. They are not always unkind, nor are they necessarily restrictive in the beginning. Sometimes, they are beautiful. They give us a sense of belonging, a community to identify with and a little reassurance that we have found our place somewhere. Being called a writer by someone who has read your work feels wonderful. Being recognised as someone approachable or dependable can make you feel seen. There is something comforting about knowing that the people around us have noticed little pieces of who we are.
Also, I think ,perhaps the most beautiful thing about being human is that we are never just one thing. We are walking-talking breathing contradictions. We can be fiercely independent and desperately miss home. We can love being surrounded by people and still crave solitude. We can be ambitious and uncertain, confident and insecure, responsible and ridiculously silly, sometimes all within the same afternoon. We can spend an entire weekend helping someone else and still have days when we cannot quite figure ourselves out. And none of these versions cancel the others out.
I suppose I don’t necessarily want to live without labels. I don’t mind being called a writer, a student, a friend, a footballer or a social butterfly. I just don’t want any of these words to become the full stop at the end of my sentence. I want them to be little descriptions along the way, not definitions of where my story must end.
So, are all of us inevitably under a label? Perhaps. We label people because it is easier to understand them when we can put them into words. We label ourselves because sometimes it is easier to understand ourselves that way, too. But I hope we remember that a label is only ever a glimpse of a person, never the entirety of one.
If I had to choose, I think I would much rather be a verb. Not because I have figured out who I am, but because I haven’t. And I hope I never completely do.
I want to keep trying, failing, teaching, learning, writing, playing, meeting people, making mistakes, changing my mind and occasionally doing absolutely nothing. I want to be able to surprise myself. I want to meet versions of myself that my present self cannot even imagine. And most importantly, I want to give the people around me the same freedom.
Because perhaps we spend so much of our lives trying to answer the question “Who am I?” that we forget to enjoy the far more exciting question: “Who else could I become?” After all, there is so much more life to live,than there are words to describe it.