are we all reduced to our occupations?

i’ve lost count of how many times the first question someone asks me is, “so, what do you do?” it doesn’t matter if i’m at a dinner party, in a taxi, waiting in line, or at the doctor’s office — the conversation gravitates toward occupation as though knowing someone’s job is the same as knowing who they are. and maybe it is, at least in the way we’ve all silently agreed to keep score.

there is a certain safety in this flow of conversation. it keeps things orderly. you ask someone what they do, they give you a title, and suddenly you know how to file them in your mental cabinet. lawyer. teacher. marketing executive. graphic designer. stay-at-home parent. the shorthand spares you the awkwardness of sitting in silence, reaching for something more vulnerable. but there’s also a strange flatness to it, a sense that we’re constantly translating our lives into job descriptions, as if the most interesting thing about us is the line that ends up on a business card.

i’ve felt this flattening in my own introductions. i’ve watched myself shrink my messy, complicated days into neat sentences, packaging them so they sound impressive enough to pass. sometimes i overcompensate — adding adjectives, polishing the edges, waiting for that flicker of recognition in someone else’s eyes that signals: okay, you’re worth listening to. other times i deflate, offering the bare minimum because i can’t stand to go through the whole performance. in either case, the exchange leaves me restless, because what we’ve traded is so small compared to what makes a life.

it’s not just the asking, though. it’s how deeply we internalize the idea that occupation is identity. think of how often we tie self-worth to productivity, how failure at work feels like personal failure, how a promotion can flood us with meaning that has little to do with the actual work itself. the language gives it away. we say, “i’m a teacher,” “i’m a lawyer,” “i’m a nurse,” not “i teach,” “i practice law,” or “i care for patients.” the verb becomes a noun, and the action hardens into essence. and yet, the irony is that so many of us feel misaligned with what we do. i know people who teach but see themselves first as musicians, who practice law but write poetry in notebooks, who manage offices but spend weekends building elaborate gardens. and when they confess these parts of themselves, it’s always with a hint of apology, as though the thing that matters most is somehow less legitimate because it doesn’t pay the bills.

i wonder when exactly occupation became such a dominant lens. some of it is practical — modern life is structured around work hours, salaries, benefits, the economies we can’t opt out of. but some of it is cultural, too. the story we tell about ourselves is expected to be linear, and work gives us the easiest plotline. you start here, you climb there, you accumulate titles along the way. never mind that real life rarely follows a ladder. never mind that people change, circle back, or discover their best selves in the margins.

there’s also the subtle hierarchy built into this system. some jobs light up a room when you say them out loud; others are met with polite nods before the conversation shifts elsewhere. nobody wants to admit it, but occupations carry status like invisible name tags. we absorb those signals from the time we’re children. no one ever asked me at ten years old, “what do you want to feel when you grow up?” or “what kind of days do you want to have?” the question was always, “what do you want to be?” and “be” really meant “what do you want to do for a living?” as though the entirety of adulthood was reducible to a single role.

the trap is that once you buy into that equation, it becomes nearly impossible to separate work from self. and yet, i think most people sense the gap. we know on some level that who we are isn’t captured by a job title. we know that the most intimate, complex parts of ourselves rarely make it into office bios or linkedin summaries. and still, when pressed, we reach for those shorthand answers, because they’re easier than unraveling the whole story.

i sometimes imagine what it would look like if we flipped the script. if instead of asking, “what do you do?” we asked, “what keeps you awake at night?” or “what makes you feel most alive?” or even just, “what’s been on your mind lately?” i know how risky that feels in practice — small talk is small for a reason, and you can’t unload your existential questions on a stranger in a lift. but still, i wonder what would shift if we stopped assuming occupation was the most relevant doorway into a person’s life.

when i think about the people i love most, their occupations are among the least interesting things about them. i know them through their quirks, their obsessions, the way they tell stories, the rhythms of their laughter, the very specific ways they like their coffee. i know them through how they show up in the messiness of everyday life — how they grieve, how they celebrate, how they carry boredom. all of these details form the texture of identity far more than job titles ever could. and yet, out in the wider world, the shorthand persists, as though everything else is footnote.

this is why burnout feels so devastating. it’s not just exhaustion from tasks; it’s the erosion of identity. if you believe you are your work, then failing at work feels like failing at being yourself. but if you can separate them — if you can see occupation as something you do, not something you are — then you create a little breathing room. burnout becomes a sign that the structure is broken, not that you are broken.

i don’t think the answer is to pretend jobs don’t matter. of course they do. they pay rent, buy groceries, keep us alive. many of them involve real skill and devotion. but perhaps the answer is to hold them in proportion — important, yes, but not the whole story. a job can be meaningful without being your entire meaning.

sometimes i try to practice this in small ways. when someone asks me what i do, i answer honestly, but then i add something else — what i’ve been reading, what i’ve been cooking, what i’ve been thinking about. it feels clumsy at first, like i’m breaking an unspoken rule. but it also feels closer to the truth. because the truth is that i am never just my work, and neither is anyone else.

so, the real task may not be to abolish the question but to complicate it. not “what do you do?” but “what else?” what else fills your hours? what else gives your days texture? what else are you trying to figure out? those questions may not fit neatly into small talk, but they are the ones that remind us we’re not reducible to occupations, however convenient the shorthand. and perhaps that’s the quiet rebellion available to all of us: to resist the flattening, to remember that the richest parts of a person’s life often exist outside the lines of their cv. to notice the ways people come alive beyond their jobs, and to let ourselves be known not just as workers, but as whole, messy, evolving beings.

so are we reduced to our occupations? only if we keep agreeing to the terms. the harder, more interesting work is to keep insisting there’s more.