“And what do you do?”  The attractive blonde leaned across the plane seat beside me, with a confidential smile. Her pressed business suit spoke volumes, as did her crisp inflection and determined look. Money, success, and an entrepreneurial twist.

This was my moment of judgment, I realized, and half-wondered what I would say next. Would I pull one of the past professions from the bag of my chequered history – university lecturer? editor? vacuum cleaner salesman - or come clean and simply tell her “unemployed bum” or perhaps ‘vagabond”, which was probably closer to the truth these days.

As a frequent traveller, “what do you do?” is probably the most common question I get asked, after “where are you from?” It’s not hard to see why, considering our modern preoccupation with defining each other by our occupations. “I’m a doctor,” “a physicist”, “a mortician”, “an auto-mechanic”…  carry with them all manner of connotations and life choices. Even in a classless society (and what society can truly make that claim?) they pin us neatly on the bell curve of socioeconomic success. 

Come to think of it, it’s probably not even all that modern a phenomenon. In ancient times, if you were the village blacksmith, the tribe shaman, the wandering bard, the jester or the king – then there was already no shortage of expectations and anticipated character traits heaped upon you.

It seems then to be a given of human nature that, like it or not, our titles and vocations are the plot points which define us for others.  The next question to ask is – why?

Convenience has likely got something to do with it, for one. The assumptions we make about strangers based on their occupations are tantamount to those we make based on personal appearance. “She has kind eyes.” “His Armani suit defines him as a man of means.”  Of course, we might just as often be proven wrong in these surmisals (think of the king who dresses in beggar’s clothes to slip invisibly amongst the common people) but it’s hardly surprising that this kind of shorthand is a stab at making sense of the universe. Don’t forget we come to adulthood chock-full of predictions derived from a lifetime’s supply of stock characters and movie clichés, starting with our very first fairy-tale or TV cartoon down to the movie you watched last weekend.  We are steeped in occupational stereotypes.

I remember a creative writing exercise I used to do with my high school English classes (see! there I go, dropping hints of ‘who I am’ again) in which they were asked to write a thumbnail character sketch based on someone’s title: “Captain of the Football Team”, “The Mean Teacher”, “The Terrorist”, “The Computer Geek” were just a few of the choices. Naturally all sorts of hackneyed typecasts were trundled out, which is part of what I’d wanted in the first place. But there’s a decidedly different ring to

Dr. Reginald P. Walton, eminent neurosurgeon, strode into the room.

versus

Elmer Fute, garbage collector, slouched into the room.

Though of course it’s when stereotypes are confounded by unexpected qualities – a janitor who doubles as a mathematic genius (Matt Damon’s role in ‘Good Will Hunting’) or an erudite psychiatrist who also happens to be a bloodthirsty cannibal (Hannibal Lecter in ‘Silence of the Lambs’) that characters in fiction become interesting.  Not that I suggest turning to cannibalism will make you more interesting!

As well as convenience, professional stereotypes also reflect a sort of naïve, underlying hope. We want to believe in a finite universe, one that fits the lego-blocks of a simplified and eminently predictable world view. It’s always easier to see things in black and white than in human shades of grey. Wouldn’t we like to believe that all doctors out there are kindly souls with a Hippocratic desire to preserve life  - or that used car salesmen are sly and conniving liars. Stereotypes help us make sense of the great mass of contradictions and irrationalities that is our data-soaked world. Even when they’re completely wrong.

There was one episode of the HBO series “Sex & the City” where a character tried her hand at speed-dating. Each time she revealed her occupation  (“a lawyer”) you could see the interest slump in her prospective date. Lawyers just weren’t sexy, apparently. His lights went off and she left the 3-minute interview disappointed. But the moment she threw honesty to the wind and claimed “flight attendant” as her career description, she couldn’t have fought off the queue of interested suitors with a fish gaffe. Same look, same woman… different career.

It might be fiction, but to the viewer it doesn’t seem to stretch plausibility very much. Every man has his stewardess fantasy, right?

And who knows? Maybe donning that white lab coat, that army uniform, affects our own behaviour too. Perhaps we start to believe the myth ourselves - “Dress for success”, the old adage goes – the belief that somehow a professional title alters our behaviour, that this same uniform makes us nobler than we really are underneath. Remember how the “dumb” scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz suddenly became bright and confident after getting his doctorate (read ‘brains’) which was merely a scroll of paper.

For me, I know that when I don my ‘travelling duds’ – safari shorts, Teva sandals, a loose shirt and a Tilley hat, usually with a camera strapped to my side like an AK_47 – I feel more relaxed and ready for adventure than when I’m wearing, say, an Armani suit. (Not that I have an Armani suit. I sold my last one to help finance this website.)

Speaking of travelling, there are often times where your ‘career’ choice can make a world of difference in the way you’re treated, particularly by Immigration departments. “Journalists” are not particularly welcome in regimes like North Korea or Zimbabwe, as most of us well know. I remember a story from one of my traveller friends who averted an unfriendly reception (and the threat of a particularly invasive physical search) crossing from Nepal into India – simply by telling the authorities, in outrage, that he was “an officer of the government of Canada” and flashing them the business card to prove it. This not only satisfied the immigration officials, but earned him a salute and respectful passage across the border. Never mind that he was merely a clerk (‘customer complaints officer’) with Canada Post. That’s quick thinking for you.

As a traveller, I’ve sometimes had fun playing with these perceptions myself. Often, particularly in Asia, hotels and hostels will ask you to fill in endless registration forms which, among other details, ask for your occupation. In the early days I would be quite straightforward about this, giving the earnest and truthful answer – teacher, editor, journalist, whatever my career flavour of that particular time happened to be.

Later I began to get more creative with my career titles: “Petrarchan poet”, “alchemist”, “deposed monarch”, “astrophysicist”… and even “metaphysical engineer” in one particularly inspired moment. Somewhere out there,  these are all gracing the databases of small hostelaries from Kunming to Johor Bahru. Never once was I questioned about my career, or for that matter called upon to write a sonnet or a syllogism or to synthesize gold. But it did make my arrival a little more interesting. I’m reminded suddenly of a guy I met at a party in Vancouver one time who even had business cards printed: “Author, Inventor, and Spy.”

It’s perhaps a paradox of this modern age, an age which claims to be a more enlightened era, that we end up defining ourselves by ‘what we do” more than by ‘who we are’. Never do we ask a stranger: ‘Are you a charitable person? Are you a good husband, a kind mother? Do you have a sense of humour and wit?  What do you find most beautiful in life?”

We never seek to probe what are, in truth, our deepest, most defining qualities -  maybe because it seems too invasive or just plain silly. And yet the answers to these questions are probably far better determinants of character than any title on a business card or letters after your name.

I’m not pretending to be any different myself. I’m guilty as the next person of making the same assumptions, the same stereotypic renderings.  But it does seem to me we spend too much time defining what we do, and not enough working out who we are. If there’s any good thing to come out of this particular economic downturn around the world, with so many careers dissolved or reshaped by economic stresses, it might be that it will give us more time to think about the important qualities that define us. Not just a title or description on a résumé.

I can’t help but think the world would be a better place if we paid more attention to Albert Einstein’s credo, that we should try not to become people of success but rather people of value.”

“So what do you do?” the passenger in the plane repeated her question, looking at me now like a bug under a magnifying glass.

In answer, I didn’t say a word, just handed her my business card. You know,  the one which reads “Author, inventor, and spy.”  That, and a flash of my trademark sly grin.