Episode 70: Identity and Center Stage

Transcript

In college, I was playing a lot of Magic, the card game, Magic the Gathering.
Toward the end of college, we were getting heavily into a format that relied on older cards.
So I ended up acquiring, slash buying, slash, you know, trading for whatever,
a handful, or a good kind of stable base of some of these older cards.
At the time, they were, I mean, they were sort of considered expensive cards for the time,
but in hindsight, they weren't that expensive. I'll get to that in a second.
Ultimately, when I was then kind of transitioning out of college and moving into some combination of grad school
and whatever else I was going to do next, I had picked up a project truck to work on.
And working on this project truck, it kind of became a big part of, I don't know,
a big part of what I was doing in life, like what I was interested in.
So I had kind of, point being, I had kind of moved away from a group of people who were playing a lot of Magic,
and I was more in tune with another environment where we were kind of working on cars,
for lack of a better way to phrase it.
So at some point, I ended up selling down my, the Magic collection that I had built,
or at least not all of it, but some of the more expensive stuff.
At the time, the, you know, I made some money out of it,
and then I used that money, I believe, in part to purchase the truck that I was working on.
But anyway, fast forward a bunch of years,
and I ended up around a, you know, more in an environment with friends and an ecosystem where I was playing Magic again.
And I wasn't so much working on the truck anymore.
And I remember thinking to myself, like, man, I really wish I hadn't sold those cars,
because at that point, those prices of the things that I sold had skyrocketed.
And so I ended up, you know, picking some of those up again and over the long run and whatever,
but I ended up paying, you know, three, four, five times as much money as I had first time around.
My initial thinking on this back then was, well, I'm never selling a Magic collection again, right?
Like, that was sort of my takeaway.
But I've been thinking about this a little differently recently.
I've been thinking about it in terms of personality and the things that we do in life.
You know, hand in hand with a lot of what this podcast is about
is sort of the idea that people are multifaceted, right?
People have many different interests and many different things they like to do
and many different talents and many different faces in their life
and many different people in their life.
And people are multifaceted in a way that sometimes doesn't come off.
Because a lot of times, you know, you meet somebody
and maybe you think that they have two or three main defining traits, right?
And those are their traits.
And then they kind of get earmarked in that way in your head.
But in reality, you know, there's all sorts of things there that
until you're around them more often or over a longer period of time,
you may never, you know, think about.
But the point in saying all this is that my little example, right,
where at some times I was playing a nerdy card game
and at other times I was working on a truck,
two different times in my life, I mean, different phases in my life.
But then I circled back to the first one.
And it made me think, it's just been, it's been sticking in my brain.
I've been thinking about the lesson there is not just don't ever let go of anything.
That's not really the point.
It's probably also not a healthy viewpoint to begin with.
I think it's more about center stage.
And what I mean by that is that if you assume that all people are comprised of,
again, many different interests and many different things
that they could dive into in their life,
sometimes some of those things will be front and center.
You know, again, like in Kyle, I was playing a lot of magic.
That was a defining trait for me.
That was a big part of my life.
And my mistake when I was leaving that environment
was assuming that I was done with it.
I wasn't done with the interest.
It's just that it was taking a step back, right?
And something else was stepping into the limelight.
Something else was coming to center stage
that was then going to be that big part of my life for a while
until it stepped back for something else.
I think I've been thinking about this a bit.
I think in some passive way, I've been thinking about this for years,
but more in the recent present.
I think I've been thinking about this a lot because
I think it's a healthier and better way.
Let me back up.
It can get frustrating, I think, as you move through life
and you think to yourself,
man, I used to have so much time to do whatever it is you like to do.
I don't know, play video games.
Or I used to have so much time to work on a car.
Or I used to have so much time to paint.
Or, you know, whatever it is that you're interested in.
Or maybe it's not even a time thing.
I don't want it to sound that way.
Maybe it's just that, you know, I used to enjoy doing this a lot more.
Or maybe it's just the thought of, I used to do this a lot more.
And maybe it kind of gives a little bit of nostalgia or something.
That can get frustrating.
Because maybe that thing that you no longer do,
for whatever reason, be it time or interest or money or,
you know, whatever the reason is you no longer do that,
if that was a real defining trait of yours,
if that was something you had tied your identity to,
where part of your identity was doing this thing,
was painting.
Part of your identity was working on old cars.
Part of your identity was playing a collectible card game.
And then you don't do that anymore?
I think it's frustrating because it's almost like
you've lost a piece of your identity over time, right?
If there was a thing that you really defined yourself as,
and then it sort of slipped away from you,
it's almost like losing a part of yourself.
But what I've noticed through my life
is that for most of the things that I'm truly interested in,
and most of the things that I tie my identity to,
they almost never have gone away forever.
Like, they slip away,
and it could be a few years,
maybe longer,
until it circles back.
And the way I've just been thinking about this
is what I was saying.
It's like,
other things just took center stage for a while.
And those things were more playing a supporting role.
It's not that you're losing
a part of your identity.
It's that that part of your identity
is just taking a back seat
for a little while
while some other things
are more front and center
and,
I don't want to say important,
but more prevalent,
more,
just more present.
Because the environment shifts, right?
You know,
if you were able to do certain things,
you know,
you still lived in your parents' house or whatever,
and then you move out,
there's a whole new set of things
you have to kind of deal with
that maybe take front and center for a while
and maybe push some other things
into the background.
Or you get married,
or you have a kid,
or you get divorced,
or you,
you know,
whatever.
You meet a new group of friends
who do a particular thing
and not another one,
you know.
There's many things in the environment
that can shift and change
that can bring your interests
and your time and attention with them.
But if you find yourself looking back
and thinking,
man,
I never do this anymore.
It used to be such a big part of my life.
You know,
if it really is part of your identity,
I've come to believe
that it will circle back eventually.
That it's just a matter of
the right environment
where it will come back around
because it is a part of your identity
and just having some faith
that if it was,
if it's something that's really part of you,
you will get a chance to do that again
and the situation will come up
because you kind of craft your life
eventually to get back to it.
You're not losing a part of yourself,
I suppose,
is the point.
It's just that that part of yourself
had to take a step back
for a little while.
And someday it will
take that step forward again.
And then maybe the new things
that you've found in your life
will take their turn in the backseat.
And that's probably all okay.