…what it would feel like if you were no longer ‘allowed’ to do your profession? Or perhaps particular aspects of your profession? For example, in my own work, here are my top five favorite things to do (not in any order): educating/teaching; public speaking; coaching on public speaking and communications; writing; photography. Now, if at any point, one or more of those things was taken away from me, what would I do? How might my identity change? Would I wilt like a flower or would I figure out something else?
These questions occurred to me while I was watching “The Sins of Sor Juana”— a special play running at the Goodman Theater as part of this year’s Latino Theater Festival. The story is an interpretation from the real life of Juana Ines de la Cruz. A self-taught Latin scholer, Juana spent her fairly short life (died at age 46) facing repression of women, and the lack of societial blessings for learning, knowledge and growth for her gender. In fact, at many points, Juana was forbidden from writing or reading, and was regaled to such ‘appropriate’ activities as cross-stitch.
Her torment and consistent pursuit of exploring and cerebral growth made me count my lucky stars that in the majority of the Western world, we are free to study, learn, grow as we please. In the U.S. and beyond, we are in fact (strongly) encouraged to push our limits in terms of intellectual growth. Do we take these freedoms and encouragements for granted? Most certainly I believe that we do.
Sometimes, when we are tired of dealing with a difficult client; in turmoil with a fellow professional; frustrated at a vendor or simply agonizing over a design solution, we need to stop and think. Just for a moment…..about how it would feel if we were no longer allowed to pursue our chosen profession. I’m not saying that all of us are in the perfect positions. But we all have the freedom to do and become whatever we’d like. Yes, even in tough economic times, we still have that freedom if we give it our best effort.