Love and Work

I have two finals left and then I've officially made a mid-life career change. I'm not a copywriter now. I'm a paralegal, in name and certificate if not in certainty.

At what point do you become what a piece of paper says you are? I've had lagtime with all the important pieces of paper in my life.

Take a marriage certificate, for instance. For my first marriage. Please take it.

I remember waking up a week later and thinking, "Is THIS what it was about? All that yearning and hoping and planning and dreaming of white dresses and veils?"

"But nothing is different. I am the same person. With a lot more responsibility and not that much more happiness."

And in that case, the happiness quotient got smaller and smaller as the years went by.

It took me a long time to accept my divorce decree, too. Although a sad relief, that piece of paper didn't automatically unburden me of the weight of my marriage.

I'm trying to figure out what I'm aiming at here. I think it has to do with acknowledging one has a core definition. One has a Self. And all the things -- pieces of paper -- we surround it with really don't touch it or change it.

But Freud said, "Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness."

Ok, this I also believe.

Relationships, for instance, are integral to my happiness. I have learned the hard way that I am constitutionally unable to "go it alone." And I am so fortunate to have become lucky in love later in my life.

And I know I need to work for my sense of well-being. I need to feel productive. And it makes me unreasonably happy to earn money.

So while they are not me, who I'm with and what I do add to what I am.

And I guess that newest piece of paper will acquire more meaning, become more real to me, the longer I live with it.

The piece of paper doesn't define, or change me. But my reasons for acquiring it, and what I do with it, underscore what I intend, and what I can create, if not what I am.