But no, they are JUST____
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Listen up, cause I am going to share something very personal. Yeah go grab that cuppa tea, I’ll wait.
What do you do?” “What are you?” these are the two most repeated questions when we are midst an introduction. This question is a weird one, over generations it has been distilled to mean something very specific : what role are you performing in the capitalist world to survive/ thrive / make more money than the rest. And thus the replies: I am an engineer, I am a dentist, I am a manager, I am an analyst. These are the expected answers. They make the questioner satisfied, okay this person has some money. But sometimes you don’t get the questions you want to answer, or the answers you want for a question. So you have a home maker saying she is a house wife, or maybe someone else referring to her as ‘just a housewife’. I hate this word ‘just’ when attached to a person. It’s the most limiting, dreadful word ever. Especially when society has decided that this word will be used only for those who do unpaid Labour. No one says she is Just a CEO or he’s just a surgeon. But somehow a home maker is just that- a homemaker. Someone who’s not financially independent is ‘just’ that- unemployed.
It stops mattering that these people have lives outside their roles. Maybe lives far more enriching and fulfilling than most CEOs and CFOs. But no, they are JUST____
How many times have our mothers been made to feel terrible about themselves, their Labour ridiculed by their own blood? Because we have deluded ourselves into thinking that a person’s worth is equivalent to the money they make.
Maybe that’s why no one answers the question ‘What are you?’ with
I am a dreamer, I am a carer, I am a giver, I am a sharer’ instead we have taken what someone does 8 hours of their day and made it their sole anchor of being. We don’t value what that person does in the remaining 16 hours. Maybe that CEO doesn’t have any life outside her work and is JUST a CEO and nothing else. Maybe the manager makes a ton of money but has the dullest personality that puts even his parents to sleep.
What you do to put bread on the table and a roof over your head has no bearing on you as a person.( Unless you are a bank robber or a con artist or Taher Shah) Detach your worth from these temporary titles and free yourself from the burden of being JUST one thing. Be everything you want to be and more. And when someone asks you what you do, you know what to say
Nazreen Fazal
Writer, Wife, Mother, Indian, Muslim. So many labels, one me. I write, I rant, I ramble in order to make sense of everything happening around. Join me on this journey as I share snippets of my life, going about work, my parenting wins and fails, and the murky waters that's long distance marriage.
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