Master of One vs. Renaissance Woman

Master of One vs. Renaissance Woman  

As babies, we are sponges.  Gathering information and experience from everything around us, trying everything at least once.  In the midst of the first five formative years of our lives, we bank those experiences and skills away to use at later times.  We focus on becoming a well-rounded human being – someone that is prepared to meet the world head on.  

But it seems like many people are far more concerned with branding themselves as something, anything.  Making themselves stand out by focusing on only one aspect of their experience or their skills.  And then marketing themselves as that and ONLY that to the world. 

I have such a hard time when people ask me what I do.  Of course, they are asking what I do for a living.  Because that question helps us to categorize each other into neat, little boxes.  Humans begin to categorize from a very young age and it just keeps going...and that is ok.  But that one aspect of our life, our job, is not necessarily a great indicator of who someone is as a person.  

But that is such a narrow aspect of what life is.  Life is the journey.  As cliché as that is.  Goals and pinpoints on a to-do list, ambitions and aspirations are not the point.  They are the window dressing, the things that happen that help to shape who you are, but are not WHO you are.

Take myself for example – I sell jewelry supplies.  That’s my job.  But does that tell you much about me?  I joke with my friends that I sell jewelry supplies because I have collected beads my entire life and I have limited hobbies, but that isn’t what gets me up in the morning or keeps me up late at night.

It isn’t what inspires me or drives me through my life.  No one thing does.   

I am an artist, a woman, a wife, a mother, a student, a writer, a cook, painter, singer, decorator, spastic dancer, homebody and adventurer.  Human beings are not singular focus creatures.  Our brains are must too large and intricate for that.  And who says you have to categorize yourself or brand yourself as one thing?  Who says? 

Once upon a time, people focused on enriching their lives through education, community, art, experience, travel, anything really.  Our founding fathers are never described as only one thing.  They were inventors, writers, lawyers, scholars, artists, revolutionaries, craftsman, musicians – they weren’t JUST a founding father.  Their lives were rich with experience and skills.  Skills they USED.  Skills they celebrated.  They were renaissance men.  

So please, stop worrying about being a master of one and start your own personal renaissance.