What do you do?

What do you do?
How many times have you asked this to inquire about occupation? What prompts you to ask this?

Will it draw you together in similarity or possibly create a divide in interests with another? What is the importance of the occupation of another person in conversing with them and coming to know them? Would you like to assess their earning capacity? Would you like to gather all the ideas you have about an occupation and pin that on them? You may not intend to do either of those, but it could follow your asking simply because of the categorical nature of the brain.

A lot of people are doing a job because it’s a job. It may have nothing to do with their true interests or their gifts. If the person had a supportive environment growing up and the luxury to let their intuition guide their choices, then this could be a wonderful question to ask but if life circumstances have been less than ideal or if certain prescribed ideas about security guided work decisions, this question may be the source of discomfort or gateway to a false front.

There was an article about this sometimes menacing question in The New Yorker a few years ago and after coming across it I began to pay attention to how often it pops up in conversations as well as how much others do or do not attach themselves to their occupation. It’s interesting to observe… and leads me to ask you to consider:

How may exchanges form when you allow overly used questions to take rest? How could you try finding a new way to approach the same old question either in the asking or the response?

There are all sorts of things we each do everyday. Perhaps those seem too perfunctory to mention, but also perhaps they create the common ground that causes us to seek communication.

I stand. I breathe. I stretch. I read. I write. I breathe. I hum. I speak. I smile. I clean. I watch. I breathe. I walk. I drive. I work. I watch. I listen. I laugh. I think. I feel. I overthink. I breathe.

What do you do?