What Did You Do?

It seems a common guage of a person's status to ask what they do or did with their time. After "how are you?" in a small-talk conversation inevitably comes "what do you do?". And every Monday morning (at least in my world), we all ask each other "what did you do over the weekend?".

This may be a long-shot observation, for some of the reason of the questions may be genuine interest (it is for me sometimes), or maybe even something else I haven't noticed. But it seems the questions come out of a genuine belief that "you are what you do". It's a sizing up. They could easily replace the question with: "how cool are you?", and get the same sort of answer - something about what they do.

I have to laugh at myself for letting this misbelief linger. I find myself answering such questions with an inflated choice of words. For the weekend question, as an example, I often answer "oh, I kept it pretty low-key this weekend", which, of course, translates: "I didn't get up to much this weekend, but that is NOT NORMAL; you should hear what I normally get up to!"

It's not evil that we do this - ask and answer each other - just foolery. They that measure their existence on a yard stick of activities will only be fulfilled in seasons of busyness (which I find distracting). I am slowly becoming conscious of the meaning to my existence being found more in who I am, rather than what I do.