One trick ponies

Hiya!

I've always been a generalist. I dabble on this and that. Poke my nose in different subjects, projects and such to learn, participate and get the feel of the subject at hand. I rarely go deeper and become an 'expert' on any given topic. I'm pretty good in many fields such as sports, social endevours and academia. Rarely the best but pretty good in any case. I've taken to myself the saying 'if you're the smartest in the room you're in the wrong room'. So I change rooms a lot.

Yes! I can climb. I have a meaning after all...

I've noticed a groving trend amongst my facebook friends that many of them have taken one aspect from their life and made it an integral part of their persona. This phenomena doesn't only limit to facebook, but it is most visible there. Some have taken worlds injustice or animal rights to champion. There's few politicians with their party agenda. Climbing, marathon running, cyckling or gym have become the pinnacle of some of their existence. In a way it's great that they have found meaningful things to pursue in their lives and want to share their views or activities with the rest of us. But is it that you need to cut everything else from your life to become that avatar of their given subject? To become taht one-trick-pony?

Some of my old business student friends have taken their title as their defining factor. Others are defining them through achievements in their dedicated sport. Few friends I've completely lost to the abyss of MMORPGs. I find it kind of sad that one needs to have a well defined box to help define their personality. I feel that would be immensly limiting and restraining to ones ability to pursue new vistas in life.

I can also see the temptation why so many go for this. It's easy, clear cut and quite straight forward. Especially defining oneself through profession is socially the easiest answer. When you go to a party where you don't know the crowd the most usual question is: "what do you do for living?". It's not "what do you like to do?" or "would you tell me an interesting story about you?". We need that box where can allocate people. Ah a lawyer - he must be smart, rich and dull. Uh a hair dresser - since he's a guy might be a bit queer. The answers might help us categorize people but is that what we want? Is that what we're actually interested in?

I think many skills, knowledge and connections can transfer from one area of life to another and immensly contribute there creating new perspectives and innovations. So limiting oneself to be just this or that is if not harmful then at least boring. I would highly recommend everyone who feels that they might have become a one-trick-pony to shake things up every now and then. The easiest way to check if this has happened is to check with who have you spent you time during the past weeks and what have your last 20 FB updates been about.