Photograph by Meruyert Gonullu

I’ve lived in Berlin for large chunks of my life and can confidently say this: city life is mostly great. In fact, ninety-six percent of city dwellers agree that urban living provides higher quality of life. Okay, that’s a made-up statistic but I’m pretty sure it’s accurate because otherwise why are they all here, taking up the tables at my favorite brunch spots?

But while I love the parks, the vibrancy, the diverse neighborhoods, the incredible wealth of cultural events, the playgrounds (as I mentioned in last week’s post: In Search of the Safety-Autonomy Sweet Spot) it’s no secret that life in the city has its downsides. And it goes without saying that one of those downsides is a lack of space. (Another one is the relentless dog poop on the sidewalks. Going for a walk with your kids in Berlin has all the relaxing charm of strolling through a minefield.) Berlin, like many major cities, is suffering from a growing housing shortage, which means that square footage is limited and costly. This housing crisis is trumped by an even more concerning shortage, one the local government has yet to address: A lack of closet space.

My Bag Full of Stuff

Our two-and-a-half-bedroom apartment has one small storage space which my husband refers to as our ‘walk in closet’ and forces me to split evenly with him by arguing that his clothes are larger than mine. Given this lack of space and my compulsive tidying tendencies, it’s puzzling to find a large work bag full of stuff on the floor of said closet, taking up valuable real estate. This bag has been sitting there, untouched, for many months now, ever since my last day of work at the hospital before my maternity leave. I meant to empty it out that same day, yet here we are.

You might wonder what this bag contains that makes it so hard to unpack. I know I have. Until the other day, when, tripping over it for the umpteenth time, it hit me. It’s not the binders and articles, or the colored highlighters, my ID, or my stethoscope, or the emergency stash of granola bars I keep tucked in the inside pocket. It’s the stuff you can’t see that has kept me from unpacking my work bag. The truth is, there’s a whole identity in there and I’m struggling to figure out where to put it.

See, for the longest time now I’ve thought of myself as a doctor. Arguably because I am one. But lately I’ve started to question what exactly that means.

The Notion of a Singular Identity

As children we are constantly being asked what we want to be when we grow up. The idea that we will be one thing and that that one thing is usually linked to our profession is instilled in us from preschool on. Kids tend to resist this idea. They will say things like: on Mondays I’ll be a ballerina and on Tuesdays a scientist and on Wednesdays the president and on Thursdays a circus performer and on Fridays a veterinarian. But somewhere along the way we give in to this notion of a singular identity and lose the awareness that we contain multitudes.

Professions such as doctor come with a particularly distinct identity. It may have to do with the duration of our training and the intensity of our work, long years in which everything else takes a backseat to the pursuit of becoming first an MD and then a specialist. There’s also the societal element of what a physician represents that we absorb and take on over time. Being a doctor provides us with a sense of purpose, meaning, and value, and as such it’s an identity most of us take pride in.

Invested In An Identity

Although my professional path hasn’t always been linear- there have been stops and starts and changes in geography along the way- I’ve never once abandoned my identity as a hospital physician. For a long time, I invested every bit of myself into establishing and refining that identity.

But as I’ve checked off more and more of the milestones I worked so hard towards accomplishing, I find myself faced with the nagging question of what comes next. What do I want for the coming decades of my career and in an even bigger sense, what kind of life do I envision for myself? As these questions arise, I’ve started to feel like the identity I’ve cultivated so single-mindedly may not be broad enough to answer them satisfactorily anymore.

How We Get Stuck

There are at least two ways that we can get stuck when it comes to identity. Either we take such a rigid view of our identity that it keeps us small, cutting us off from the fullness of our present selves. Or we chain ourselves to an identity we’ve outgrown, leading us away from the manifold possible future versions of ourselves.

The problem is, when we’re caught in the swirl of life, whether it’s career building or parenting or both, we don’t often stop to question whether the identity we inhabited in the past still holds true. We may, however, feel the subtle signs of living in an outgrown or overly rigid identity. Maybe we have a niggling sense that something just isn’t aligning the way we had hoped it would, a feeling of disconnect from the life we are currently living. Or maybe life has started to feel stagnant, without a sense of growth and excitement for what lies ahead.

Transitions have a way of bringing these truths to the surface, of making us reevaluate our professional and/or personal goals, and therein lies both their beauty and their challenge. In the transition from being on my own to becoming a mother, from moving from one continent to another and back again, from traversing one decade of life to the next, I’ve created and left behind many identities. The me that first set out on this path it isn’t the me that is traveling it now. My perspective has changed and with it my interests, goals, and aspirations for the future.

Freedom and Loss

There is an expansiveness, a sense of freedom, a feeling of abundant possibility that comes from challenging our previously unquestioned identities. From reexamining how we want to spend- in Mary Oliver’s words-  our “one wild and precious life”.

But there can also be a real sense of loss and even grief when we realize it’s time to shed an identity we held so dear. Part of the problem is that we often mistake our identities with our roles. We end up defining ourselves by what we produce or perform. When our sense of identity is deeply entrenched in what we do, it can feel disorienting and anxiety-inducing to stop doing that thing. We risk losing sight of who we are without that identity. In the end, we‘re left feeling somehow adrift.

So what to do when we realize an identity no longer fits but shedding it feels like abandoning a piece of ourselves?

An Untethered Identity

I’ve come to believe we need to regain the childlike understanding that our identities are manifold, fluid and transcendent, untethered by where we work, what responsibilities we have, or what titles we lay claim to. Maybe our identity is more like a tapestry of our values, our actions, our purpose, and our past selves than the individual threads we currently hold.

Reflecting on what my identity means to me, I’ve realized that while I have many roles- pediatrician, mother, academic, instructor, researcher, writer- I cannot be reduced to those roles. Instead, I am someone whose purpose is to ease suffering and to help children live into their fullest potential. I am a curious soul who never wants to stop learning new things and aims to share what I’ve learned with other curious souls. I am, at my core, a person who is happiest imagining an abundance of versions of myself that might manifest in the future. I contain multitudes.

And because that is who I am, I cannot lose my identity, whether or not I continue to wear the hats I currently wear, or return to former ones, or find new ones altogether.  I’ve also realized that every identity I’ve had along the way informs the me I am today. Nothing is ever really lost, it just evolves into something bigger, more complex and more deeply rooted in the entirety of our human experience.

As for the bag on the floor of my so-called walk-in closet, I’d be lying if I said I’ve since unpacked it. But when I finally do, I plan to put away everything inside it with gratitude, knowing that it has served the ultimate purpose of making me a more complete version of myself.