I am a verb, not a noun.

Escaping the prison of identity to embrace action.

“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'm going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.”

I read this Stephen Fry quote through the hole made possible with my hoodie strings drawn tight. In the midst of a doom scroll, I transitioned to Pinterest to turn the night around.

In between the aesthetically pleasing countertop spreads and craft project ideas, I will never get to, this quote made my thumb come to a halt and ponder for a second.

Was I imprisoned by the need to “be” something? Do I stop myself from “doing” until I believe I am the “being” that can?

As so many moments and memories flashed before my eyes, I realized the answer is a resounding yes.

I was the sparkliest little girl. Literally and figuratively. I adorned myself in poofy skirts, tiaras, and sequined t-shirts, that always had a fine layer of dirt on them from my movements of the day. I sparkled because I joyfully pursued every activity I wanted, and I was curious. On any given day, I would draw, sing, dance, make mud sculptures, write songs, forage for bouquets, and hunt for lizards. All in a day's work! As much as someone can be aware of themselves, I knew I was wholly Me, who expressed her full Me-ness through her daily activities. They did not define me but revealed me, and I found joy in that.

As I transitioned from a carefree childhood, where silly dances and glitter-glued masterpieces were met with smiles and claps, to a more self-conscious adolescence, I became increasingly obsessed with who I was and what I was allowed to pursue. The impending pressure to conform to societal expectations, coupled with the fleeting nature of youth, led me to meticulously plan every outfit, every word, every move, striving for flawlessness, a puppet dancing to the strings of others' approval. It was no longer about what I would do but who I would be.

My mind raced. What can I claim that I can also make people believe? What can I proclaim to my identity without the risk of being found out as a fraud? What can I execute to perfection? I knew because I wrote, that didn’t make me a writer. However, I also knew that if I said I was a writer, I believed I was the next Brontë or Plath.

So proclaiming myself as a writer/maker/creative— a noun that categorized me, was off the table. If I am proven not to be the next great Brontë, then what would I be? The person who was wholly Me wasn’t enough in this new benchmarking system I found myself in early adulthood. There was safety in noun avoidance.

I couldn’t have seen that insisting what I do was who I am, became a complete avoidance to do in order to be. The backward logic that guided me insisted that when I am the writer, then I can write. The blank page, once a comfort of endless possibilities, now loomed as a daunting adversary, taunting me as it whispered, “You’ll never be a writer if you don’t write.” Every stroke of my pen or step into a new room is met with a barrage of whispers, “You are not THIS,” that grew into a cacophony I couldn’t stand.

The weight of expectation, a heavy chain forged from self-doubt, has bound me for far too long. Each step away from my carefully crafted identity has felt like breaking free from a self-imposed prison. The liberation that comes from embracing the action, not the outcome, is a sensation I’ve only recently begun to understand.

I thought for so long that the sparkly girl was gone, strangled by my restraining obsession with identity. But, she secretly shows herself in the stories I make when I see two people talking at a coffee shop, imagine this beautiful lamp in this spot, or choose to arrange plants in my garden bed so the colors make a pleasing pattern. She is still doing.

After all, isn’t it so true that we are verbs? My true essence is found in the actions I take— thinking, giving, exploring, and making. The way a sparkly child reveals herself every day through her myriad of self-expressions can inspire us to leave the “being” behind to embrace the action that unfolds when we leave the prison of identity. Imagine what I could make when I stop trying to figure out what it means about me. It is incredibly freeing to think of yourself as someone who does, not someone who is, and I am now tunneling out of my prison to embrace a new idea: “I am not a writer, but I will write. I am not an artist, but I will make art.”