When discussing last week’s article on social interaction with a friend, I came a shocking insight, I struggle to function without a proper role! And this may well be the case for many of us. In the previous article I am concluding that I am not comfortable engaging in social interaction if I don’t play a specific role, eg, banker, coach, mindfulness trainer etc. In today’s article I am further exploring my thoughts around the importance of roles in my life and the relevance of being able to do without them.
Let’s look at the function and origin of roles a bit closer. Ever since childhood we are taught to play roles. One of the first is probably that of boy or girl. When you toddler boy tries on Mummy’s shoes and tells everyone: look how pretty I am, many parents are quick to rush in and set some firm boundaries: that’s not how boys behave. And when you precious princess comes home with a ripped and dirty dress, because she has been racing bicycles in the mud, you may tell her that is so un-ladylike.
From there we add on: when we send our kids to MMA, we are not just looking to teach them a skillset. More importantly, we ask them to take on the role of a disciplined fighter. When we send them to the chess club, that of a thinker and when we send them to the young business club, that of an entrepreneur. The idea is that – by assuming such roles – our children will take on the values that come with such roles
So how do parents use roles in their children’s education? The most traditional view on parenting is that the children follow in the footsteps of the parents. If the parents have a tofu stall, the children learn the trade from the parents and someday take over the stall so the parents can retire. When the parents are doctors, the children may well get inspired, and the parents will be able to help their protégé to follow in the footsteps of Hippocrates and land an internship in a famous hospital. (Unless the parents are surgeons, in which case, frankly, the kids will likely be scared into quite the opposite direction.)
A more contemporary and trending view is to let children try out a many roles when they are growing up, so that they can form an opinion of what roles suite them. Some parents go a far as to take their kids to court hearings and hospitals to see what lawyers and doctors do (I wonder if they ever include a trip on a fishing boat or to a farm as well) so that at some stage we can chose what to study.
Sadly, most of a barely have an idea what role we want to play in terms of livelihood, by the time we have to choose our study, apart from those happy few, if which the parents say that they knew even as a toddler exactly what they wanted to become later (funny enough it seems to always only be the parents staying such nonsense). So we chose some generic study like business administration, law or engineering, even though I never ever heard anyone say that they learned anything useful in such studies. True that: it teaches you self-discipline and Academic mindset, and it may give you access to a useful alumni network, but that’s about it.
By the time we finish studies, most of us then take the role we can rather than the one we want, and honestly we still know little about what we want.
The question is, are we ever (taught how to) not playing a role? And just being us? Do we know how to drop the conventions of what is expected from us in our roles? How comfortable are we in those situations?
In a discussion about climate change, are we able to sidestep our geopolitical upbringing? At a party, are we able to behave the way we feel instead of the way people expect us to, based on our role (I am “the wine connoisseur” but guess what? Tonight I just really feel like a pint of beer.)
The question on being able to do without roles is relevant for two reasons; First of all, we may found ourselves lost when we cannot play our usual role (s). This is particularly pertinent when we for instance lose our job or livelihood. These days we are identifying so much with our role as eg doctor or actor, that if we lose the capability to play this role, even if temporarily, this may seem like an existential threat to me. Second, perhaps more cerebral reason, and strictly my own personal opinion, is that – in absence of dominant roles that we default too, roles that are often instilled on us by nurture and convention – we may discover a side to ourselves that forms a more natural basis for leisure activities or livelihood. Perhaps a chance to discover our true form of self, as it would have developed in a more neutral and less biased world
Personally, I have embarked on a journey, to hold on less tightly to roles, even to consciously try out different roles to get a different perspective (try out different de-bono hats, for the professional coaches amongst us). I also know from myself, that in purely social situations, I must have a functional role, because I never had any social role to play, when I grew up. (please revert to my article on social interaction for more on that) My functional role is my armour without which I feel naked.
So are roles good or not? In my view they have a function, they anker us and give us a feeling of safety, but they can weigh us down like a weighty armour and we should learn how to function without it, when needed. But being completely devoid of roles can make people feel lost. It seems intuitively right that too many options for potential roles we can fulfil in life, is a material contributor to the near epidemic levels of depression amongst younger generations.
This journey to learn to let go of typical roles, should start young because roles get imprinted onto our lives at early age and form a crucial part of the drivers of our behavior thereafter. Learning to function without roles, can be tiresome as all options are on the table and we feel vulnerable trying something new and facing rejection. But doing so is a red line in the vast area beyond our comfort zone.
So I ask you to consider: what role am I playing right now and what would happen if I let go of it for a while?
Original Article Posted on LinkedIn HERE.
