Chapter 5. Can People’s Identity Change?
Rob started his first job as a clerk in a bookstore when he was still in high school. The thing Rob liked most about his job was his boss, Dutch Sullivan, a middle-aged family man in reasonable shape who was just beginning to lose his hair, which was turning gray anyway. Rob didn’t know what to expect in his first job—maybe to get yelled at a lot and have to do all the hard work. But he quickly realized that Dutch was more like a father to him. Dutch read a lot, and he and the customers had many lively discussions about new voices and which books inspired, entertained, and enlightened them. Rob was always included in the talks, and that motivated him to broaden his own reading list. The exchanges also opened his mind to listening to different opinions and points of view. He and Dutch often stayed and talked long after the store closed. Rob found he could even confide the things that troubled him in his chats with Dutch, who never gave directives, but offered options to consider.
Tucked into a corner of the town square in Blakenfield, Dutch made sure the store acted as a virtual literary cornerstone of the community. He was a member of the library board, was active in a number of other improvement activities, and let groups meet in the store. The PTA mothers always had their bake sale by the front door, and Dutch never turned away anyone who had a reasonable request. Once when a young girl came in and looked at the same book three times in one week, Dutch realized she couldn’t afford the book. Rob told him the girl, Kathleen, came from a poor family and had been ostracized by most of her classmates. That may have been because she hadn’t been able or encouraged to bathe as often as the others when she was younger. But the stigma had stuck even though she had, all on her own, become the most fastidious student in their high school. Still, she remained an outcast, and poor, in a small town—never a good combination. The next time Kathleen came to the store, Dutch took the book off the shelf and handed it to her. “You can have this. A gift,” he said. “If that makes you feel awkward, you can come sweep the front sidewalk some morning.”
Kathleen clutched the book to her chest and hurried out the door. Rob watched her go and hoped that at some point in his life he would want something as much as that girl had wanted that book.
In the days ahead, Rob noticed when he came to the store early that the sidewalk in front was always swept immaculately clean. Neither he nor Dutch saw Kathleen doing it, but they had a pretty good idea who the elf was doing the chore, and it always made both of them smile.
Rob saw Dutch at the park, too, often playing tennis with his wife, Betsy, or playing doubles with their kids. When Rob told him how he admired Dutch’s skill on the courts, Dutch gave him one of his old rackets and taught him the game. He worked with him until Rob became a formidable player in his own right.
Dutch was also a good mentor to Rob at the store. He encouraged Rob to read The New York Times Book Review and search the new titles for a fresh voice or an engaging read. He taught Rob the importance of knowing the tastes and interests of the people who shopped at the store. When Rob graduated and had the opportunity to head off to Champaign–Urbana for college, Dutch surprised him with a scholarship that he and several other neighboring merchants had put together for him. And Dutch said he was sorry he didn’t have the money to provide all of the support on his own.
On every trip home from college, Rob would drop by the store and Dutch would pump him about all he’d learned and challenge him to defend his ideas in spirited chats. Each time, though, Rob noticed there were fewer books on the shelves. Where books had been crammed together, spines out, they were face out now and stretched across the shelves to give the illusion of stock.
“What’s that about?” Rob asked.
“Times are tougher,” Dutch said, sharing a forced grin. “But I’m still getting by.”
Then one Christmas break, Rob came home to Blakenfield, and when he went to the store he found it locked. Brown paper lined the display windows, and a sign on the door said the space was available for rent.
Rob asked around and learned how the store had begun to falter, then failed, and finally gone under. Folks said Dutch could have blamed a number of things—the changing times, or a community that no longer shopped locally, or customers who shifted their loyalties to big-box chains. But he hadn’t complained. He’d just quietly closed the door one day and sold the stock to a remainder company. Shortly after that, his wife, Betsy, had left him. His family had fallen apart. He’d dropped out of all the organizations and activities that had been part of his life. He was now alone.
Rob asked around, and his friends said if he wanted to find Dutch, all he had to do was watch the streets. They said all Dutch did these days was walk, haunting the sidewalks as he paced from one end of town to the other. They said he walked, and walked, and walked. Rob kept his eyes open and eventually saw Dutch’s bent-over form taking long strides, his frowning face fixed on the snow-dusted sidewalk ahead of him. Rob hurried and stopped Dutch and almost reeled back at the weathered face that looked back at him. Dutch tried to smile, but couldn’t quite manage it.
“Is there anything I can do?” Rob asked.
“Can you bring my wife back to me?” Dutch snapped.
Rob didn’t know what to say to that, and while he was pondering, Dutch spun and was off at his brisk pace again, his shoulders bent like a brooding bird. Soon he was out of sight.
Rob wished he could have taken some action, but he’d been so stunned by the change in Dutch that he’d been speechless. He tried to track Dutch down, but his house had been sold and Rob didn’t know where to look. He had to go back to school before he could do anything. While there, he gave Dutch’s situation a lot of thought and resolved that he would do what he could when he was back in Blakenfield next. If he and the old gang didn’t do something, Rob feared Dutch would be lost for good.
It was spring before Rob got back to town. The first thing he did was ask if anyone had seen Dutch.
“You’ll find him at the tennis courts,” said Sylvie Murphy, the owner of the appliance store that did business in the space next to what had been the bookstore.
That was a head-scratcher. But that’s where Rob headed. He found Dutch, tennis racket in hand, and at least 15 children gathered around him. He was giving lessons. He was standing slightly straighter and, more important, he was smiling.
A cluster of parents sat in the bleachers watching, so Rob sat with them until the lesson was over. As he sat down, he could make out a new sign proudly displayed on the nearest fence that lined the courts: “The Dutch Sullivan Tennis Courts.”
When the kids came screaming over to their parents, all excited and glowing with new budding skills, Rob went onto the courts where Dutch was gathering up loose tennis balls with a large square basket. He looked up at Rob and smiled. “You look surprised.”
“I am.”
“I’ll bet you expected the worst.”
“Well....” Rob hesitated. “What happened?”
“You’re not going to believe it, but I was walking along one day—I’d been in a bit of a funk for a while there—and this young lady came up to me and said, ‘Mr. Sullivan, can I get you to kick yourself in the butt, or do you want me to do it for you?’”
“How dare she?” Rob’s face flushed and his fingers began to curl. “Who was it?”
“There, there,” Dutch said. “Turns out that was just what I needed to hear. And you’ll never guess from whom. It was that girl Kathleen who used to sweep the sidewalk for us. Turns out she’s just wrapping up pre-med school, on a scholarship she earned with her grades, and is heading toward what I suspect is going to be a mighty fine doctor someday.”
“What did she do that I couldn’t have done?” Rob said.
“I appreciate your intentions, but I wasn’t ready then.” Dutch put the basket down and rested on the handles. His grin stayed in place, relaxing Rob. “I guess I still had a bit of moping to do. My back was up, and I was angry at the world right then. She talked me around that.”
“What’d she say?” Rob asked.
“She asked me about the last time I’d been happiest in life, truly happy. I said it had been when playing tennis as a carefree young lad learning the game, excited about gaining a skill and feeling the zest of competition. She pumped me about my identity, too. She said I was a giver, a part of the community, involved, so what should I be doing about that?”
“And that led to this?” Rob asked.
“Well, I had to practice, and people I knew saw me, and word got out. Someone hinted to the city council that teaching tennis to kids from all parts of town would be a good idea. Next thing I knew, the manager of city parks was twisting my arm and bending my ear. So here I am. Those kids who are just leaving are all from the poorer side of town, where Kathleen used to live herself.”
“I like the sign.” Rob nodded toward the one that now bore Dutch’s name.
“Bunch of silliness, really. Damn thing embarrasses me.” But when Dutch glanced toward it, a lot of pride showed past the grin, and he didn’t look embarrassed at all.
Step #4—Master the Rules of the Road
You need guidelines to keep you on track—such characteristics as honesty, trust, hard work, determination, and a positive attitude.
Discussion
In the true story of Dutch Sullivan, we can contemplate whether his identity changed. Did it evolve, or did it return to an earlier version? I think there are a couple of ways to look at this. One theory of identity holds that your identity is determined by the roles that you play out in your life. There is a whole body of writing that describes how social roles define your identity. At any moment in time in this model, your identity is a function of the role you are playing at that moment in time. Often you’re likely to be playing multiple roles of varying degrees of importance to you. For example, you might be a parent, a teacher, a social worker, an executive, a friend, and so on. You probably find yourself changing focus and priorities as time goes by.
If we subscribe to a role-based model of identity, we could argue that Dutch Sullivan’s identity did indeed change over the years; although at the end of the story, we find him playing out an identity rooted back to when he’d been “playing tennis as a carefree young lad learning the game, excited about gaining a skill and feeling the zest of competition.” When I talk with enduringly successful people, they sometimes take on seemingly quite different roles throughout their lives. However, when I dig a little deeper, I find that changing roles are pretty much deepening expressions of a successful person’s true identity.
This is probably a good time to revisit this idea of success. A lot of the time, the external world wants us to believe that success is all about impressive achievement, especially the attainment of fame, wealth, and power. Well, I’ve met more than my fair share of people who have fame, wealth, and power who are mostly miserable. Right now, you might be saying that you’re good with the fame, wealth, and power thing—that you’ll take your chances on being miserable. But it’s not an either/or situation. The mainstream media stories about successful people, along with wishful thinking about instant gratification or a magic pill for success, may make it seem as if they were overnight successes, but it rarely happens that way.
People who enjoy lasting success mostly toil with every ounce of their energy and persistence, with heart and soul, for their whole lives. They become lovers of an idea they’ve been passionate about for years, creating an obsession with every detail, losing track of time. In a real sense, it’s something that they’d be willing to do for free, for its own sake. Quincy Jones wouldn’t give up his music if it wasn’t popular, nor would Nelson Mandela rest until apartheid was crushed. It’s hard to retire from an obsession. Jack Welch is no more likely to stop teaching his brand of business than Oprah is likely to stop inspiring the human spirit. These people do something because it matters to them.
If your life becomes about building an authentic identity you express by becoming really good at doing something you love, and that something is highly rewarded by society, then you’ll probably end up with fame, wealth, and power. But if you just go for the fame, wealth, and power, you’ll likely end up being unsatisfied and miserable—and maybe prematurely dead.
In life, you’re going to face changes. Sometimes you’ll get the best of them, and other times, they may seem to get the best of you. How you deal with change in the long run depends on how anchored you are in the positives of your identity.
Remember, I said that your perceptions are often a battle between positives and negatives, and which side wins depends on you—on which wolf you feed.
Let’s pause to recall the first three steps of the process:
Step 1. Check your ID. Find out who you really are. Success depends on self-awareness.
Step 2. Create your vision. A well-defined vision allows you to make meaningful, realistic goals for your business or personal life.
Step 3. Develop a travel plan. Create a plan of action that allows you to work toward your goals.
Now, you can extend from that by developing rules that keep you on track, focused on a purpose that promises you your version of success. Change may cause you to feel confused, out of sorts, and you need to focus on what makes you, well, you—your identity. You need to have rules in place. What positive qualities will help you? Such characteristics as honesty, trust, hard work, determination, and a positive attitude.
So when you have to stop and reboot, these rules kick in—maybe not at first, but when you need them most, if you do this right. They’ll help you stabilize, adapt, and, if necessary, find the new you—or, at least, what you perceive is your identity.
You’re going to make mistakes, and you’re going to make choices—some bad. You’re going to be handed the short end of the stick sometimes, even when you did nothing wrong. Dust yourself off. Get over it. And revisit your rules.
Your rules should be building around the core of your values and the aspects of you that aren’t likely to change. If you’re an introvert, it isn’t likely that you can suddenly become an extrovert. Some things you can adjust. Earlier, I admitted I wasn’t the thinker that Oprah is. But I did improve on that. There are things you can do in dealing with change. And if you’ve followed the process, you’ll find a wholesome, healthy, ongoing you—rich in the identity of values—to help you reboot and get started again.
In the next section, you meet Steve Jobs, who embraced a number of roles and faced extraordinary challenges in his all-too-short lifetime. Ask yourself whether his identity changed or whether he took on a portfolio of roles in which he practiced the intense expression of his core values and identity. To be successful in any of the roles you take on in your life, you have to fill the role with the spirit of your real self, your passion, and your values. This is your true identity. It can become stronger over time as you learn and grow and stop attempting or pretending to be what you think the external world wants you to be. You might just find yourself saying to folks, “You know, I used to be different, but now I’m the same.” They probably won’t know what on earth you’re talking about. But you will. You will know that you’ve stopped letting the world drop in the quarters and press your buttons so that you play their tune. You’ll be playing your own tune, stepping into your greatness. You’ll be comfortable in your own skin because the internal you and the external you will match. In spirit, they will be very much the same—not different anymore.
Every time I read this, I am deeply moved. In so may ways, it is an impossible story, starting with the fact that his biological mother did not have an abortion when she found herself pregnant with Steve. If you wrote this story as a work of fiction, critics would complain that it was too far removed from reality to be taken seriously. Yet true it is, and people who knew him will tell you there was no ambiguity about the identity called Steve Jobs. Here is a man whose passion for great design and exceptional user experiences has changed the way most of us interact with our world. I think Steve would be happy if we think of him as a champion of real identity because he invented so many ways for us to express ourselves as passionate and authentic individuals.
As he came to terms with his death arriving sooner than he hoped, he also came to terms with the idea that no one is indispensable. And then he worked until the day before his death, making Apple indispensable in our lives.
Questions to Consider
1. What are your core positive values that you think you can most rely upon when the going gets tough or the ground shifts out from under you?
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2. What rules can you make for yourself? Would “Stay hungry” and “Stay foolish” be among them?
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3. Who can you turn to for support? What relationships, affiliations, friends, and acquaintances can you count on when the going gets rough?
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