I came away from my 25th college reunion with the overwhelming desire to have answered questions like "What do you do?" (having gone to a Christian college) with "Oh, I'm a striptease dancer" or maybe, "I'm a professional hobo". I'm sure the reactions would be just as dramatic as if I had said, "I'm a multimillionaire." Why do we feel we need to define ourselves by what we do? We would never consider answering the "What do you do?" quest with, "I am a chair," yet we have no problem saying we are a mechanic, engineer, lawyer or teacher--all just as much nouns as chair, table, car or book. Having established which noun those in our circle represent, we, categorizing them by our personal order of importance, find ourselves directing our attention to those whose order of importance tops our list. We merely acknowledge the existence of those toward the list bottom. Does the asking of "What do you do?" serve the purpose of weeding out those worthy of our attentions?
Take a look around, you will see people shifting restlessly and nervously, carrying on superficial conversations in which they really have no interest. It's like they are bored with their lives and assume others are not. The bragging is done merely because they are not so much trying to impress, but to convince themselves they are happy with their own lives.
Reunions should be a place to relive the past, a place to realize the history that brought us to the today. The path we began may have changed directions many times on our way, yet vital to the present are the footprints of yesterday and the friendships that helped shape our character of today.
