Not every noun can be paired with every verb. Or at least that’s what my mind tells me. I come up with names in order to simplify my picture of what can and can’t happen. Cognitive dissonance is what happens when a person observes that the nouns they assign to themselves for whatever reason can’t be matched up with the verbs they actually do. It’s a base reaction to abstractions threatening to collapse and render the world a whole lot more complex than it was 10 minutes ago.
But cognitive dissonance so often stands in the way of people and what they could be. “I’m not an athlete, why would I use barbell training?”. “I’m not a computer programmer, why would I learn how the internet works?”. I’ve heard all kinds of these excuses from myself and others, I’ve noticed this pattern of ego protection is anathema to personal growth.
In fact, the most fascinating people I know would never refer to themselves as artists, engineers, or athletes. They just did what those nouns do. They were defined by verbs, not nouns. I might be inclined to even call it a rejection of object-oriented princples, if I were feeling particularly rhetorically clever.
So I’ve resolved to think of myself differently. Not as an object with strict behavior, whose action requires consistency, but rather as an amalgam of what I do every day. This cuts both ways, in that it allows me to do things that seem unlike me, but it also calls into question beliefs I’ve held about myself that are no longer true. I call myself a musician, for instance, but the last time I practiced an instrument was months ago. So I am what I do, and I can do anything. Now I’m one step closer to a writer, look at that!
Andrew Taber 