The career we get paid for is what people see us as. Typing that sentence seemed strange, but we all know it’s true.

Even in retirement, people still form opinions of someone based on how they earned a living as adults. Take Joe, a retired policeman. People still treat Joe like a police officer.

But what if Joe always loved to make pottery, even as a police officer, doing it in his off time, always wishing he could make a living at it, and then finally, in retirement, he takes it seriously and begins selling it? Most people who know him will assume that the pottery making is a passing fancy, a fun thing retirees do, not who Joe really is because he was into law enforcement, not Pottery Barn. However, when he brings in significant money and attention, then all of a sudden, he’s Joe the potter.

I don’t know if this is a United States thing or a global thing, but we judge one another by what we do to earn money. In my life experience, it seems the more money someone earns (even someone who shows a phony affluent life), garners more respect. It’s incredible how many people equate people who have money to being more important.

The kind, humble, and happy janitor doesn’t seem as important as a mean, arrogant, and miserable lawyer. That lawyer can be a complete jerk, and most people think it’s part of the job and excuse the behavior. They earn respect because of a title.

That janitor might be very well-read, interesting as heck, and live a rich life traveling and experiencing life to the fullest. My husband and I met a super friendly guy in St. John, British Virgin Islands. He appeared as if he didn’t have two nickels to rub together and lived on the beach. Seriously. After speaking to him, we learned he left a successful career as a lawyer in Philadelphia to live a simple life in the Caribbean, and it made him very happy. He owned the restaurant we were eating at. We would not have known his history if we didn’t speak to him.

Judging someone by the way they look or by their career is not the whole picture of life. People have lives outside of their jobs. A computer programmer might sing in a band, his true passion, but people might only see him as a computer programmer because that’s his “real” job.

Every job I have had has not been my choice of career but a means to a paycheck. My family and friends have developed an opinion of me because of my job, the one I earned money at but it was the furthest away from who I am.

Lately, I’ve been getting much better at telling people who I am. Only when I share that I sing, write songs, and write books and blogs I don’t get the acknowledgment I’m looking for. I wonder if I said I was so and so (that they recognize as being “someone important”) and published such and such a book, would I be treated differently? Probably.

Maybe too many fibbers tell tall tales of what they do and never really do anything. Then, people like myself who toil and sacrifice every single day working toward the goal of earning a living doing those things I talk about are mistaken as wannabe wishes, and they don’t give it a second thought. I don’t know. Maybe people are just so wrapped up in their lives they don’t have any more space for someone else’s. Or maybe it’s something else. I never got any respect or acknowledgment from my family for who I am, and that’s kept me quiet for a long time, not because of the belief I have in myself but because I believed more in theirs.

Let’s try not to judge and take people at their word. We all want acknowledgment for who we are. Listen to others when they speak about their passions and notice how their faces light up. Celebrate those quiet folks who are terrified to be who they are for fear of judgment and rejection.

Thank you for reading this. I hope everyone you meet sees the real you. We are all unique and deserve to be who we are—all the time.

To being ourselves,

Francesca