We’re Not Nouns, We’re Verbs

Inspiration on the joy of DOING, not BEING.

Every once in a while I’ll stumble across an idea (in this case a quote) and just think, “bingo.”

Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it. That is your punishment. But if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing — an actor, a writer — I am a person who does things — I write, I act — and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.
— Stephen Fry

The exact Wilde quote to which Fry is referring is this:

“If you want to be a grocer, or a general, or a politician, or a judge, you will invariably become it; that is your punishment. If you never know what you want to be, if you live what some might call the dynamic life — but what I will call the artistic life — if each day you are unsure of who you are and what you know you will never become anything, and that is your reward.”
— Oscar Wilde

I relate to this on a personal level — not only because of the actor and writer thing, but probably stemming from networking events where people ask the inevitable question, “So, what do you do?” (I may try to start quoting Stephen Fry to them at the risk of…