How do you define yourself?
Do you talk about what you do?
Or who you are?
Do you use titles, labels? Do you start with your name? Do you mention your age? Ethnicity? Nationality? Parents? Friends? Family? Religion? Politics?
I’ve always considered myself a student.
A student of business. A student of life. A student of magic. A student of academia.
And I also will mention that I am a magician.
Magic is my medium for connection. So it makes sense.
And then it gets a bit blurry. Sometimes I’ll introduce myself as a writer. I’d like to define myself as one, because, well, I’ve written everyday for over a year. I enjoy writing and it has progressively become more important to me over the past year.
Athlete? Because I also play a lot of basketball. Some weeks, I’ll play more basketball then I perform magic. But I’m not sure if I’d define myself as a basketball player. It’s more of a hobby now than a passion. Magic is my passion. It’s something I plan to pursue and make something bigger outside of just magic. Basketball will always just be a hobby, whereas some basketball players want to continue it as a career or use it as their medium for influence and motivation.
Reader? I’ve read a book a week this year for 2018.
And I also love the violin. I just don’t have the time to play it as often as I’d like to.
Musician?
I think three labels are good.
Student. Magician. Writer.
But at the end of the day, I hope that if all my labels disappeared, if I can no longer call myself a magician, or musician, or athlete, that if you stripped me naked of my self-given definitions, at least I can still be just a good person.
Because that’s all we can really ask of ourselves.
Being a good person. That’s the best label. That’s how you should define yourself.
Blog of Jeff Wang 