Role With the Changes

In life, we are obligated to play a certain number of roles. Daughter, friend, brother, girlfriend, husband, employee, parent...

Some are unwillingly bestowed upon us, while others we choose for ourselves. In either case, the longer you exist in this role, the more its conditions become you. As with anything: do it for long enough, and you become good at what you're doing. If not good, then, at the very least, comfortable.

Consider the phenomenon of type-casting. An actor or actress plays a part effectively, and they run the risk of never being perceived as anything other than this character. By their fans, by their colleagues, and even, in some cases...by themselves. Have you ever heard an actor refer to the phrase, "the role I was born to play"? Type-casting can be a dangerous thing. In Hollywood, it can veritably ruin a career. In life, there's a little more at stake.

I believe the scariest thing about being in our twenties, is the sudden and intense altering of our roles in relation to our world. Those who were just adolescents, are now adults. Those who were dating are now married. Those who were married are now parents. Friends become family or become enemies. Parents become friends, or in some cases a hindrance. Roles which you've played your entire life, and become quite good at, are falling away. And you are forced to become something altogether different.

It seems that some of our truest moments as adults, come in the times when we are suddenly forced to reevaluate what we thought to be true about our roles in this world. My friend Stephanie was a mother just four weeks ago. Now she is not. Her daughter is gone. Another good friend of mine was a husband very recently. Now he is not. His wife is gone. Two more of my good friends are about to become wives. Two more about to become parents. And with the onset of the new conditions and responsibilities these people are bound to be facing, they have to simultaneously try to remain the same as they were, in relation to the world as they have always known it. How do you do that?

How don't you screw it up?

I recently tried on a new role for size, and it turns out that I may not be as adaptable as I'd like to believe. It seems that whether they meant to or not, my parents created a person quite protective of her space and time. Quite protective of herself. And quite unwilling to adapt to a new part. It's a challenge in all of us to take the uncomfortable role and abandon the one that we know and have grown accustom to.

I don't know the resolution of this trial. It's hard to understand how people adapt, sometimes so seemingly flawlessly. But it must be somewhere in the nature of us all. To adapt to the roles we are given. The trick is to realize, that what you think you know about yourself definitively... what you are sure to be the real you... the "you" you know and love... may very soon not be you at all. As life changes, sometimes without warning, we do too. And so do the roles that we play.