I found myself thinking over the last few days about how I’ve grown in different ways and what I need to continue growing. And, as luck would happen, a few people brought to my attention something I had written about how people categorize.

We’re all seen in different ways, and how we see ourselves evolves. How we see ourselves feeds how we are seen, how we are seen affects how we see ourselves, and so on and so forth.

If you were to ask my friends, you’d probably hear about my irreverent humor, my above average cooking (I’m no chef), or the parallels between myself and a certain Lannister of short stature.

Ask some people I deal with, and you’ll likely hear that I’m honest, straightforward and authentic. Ask others, and I have no idea what they’ll say. I have a close circle, I try to treat everyone as well as I would like to be treated and while I am critical I tend to be critical of actions instead of people. Just because someone does something dumb doesn’t mean that they are dumb.

Of course, after you tell them it’s dumb and they keep doing it…

So all of this made me think of how we classify people, how we classify ourselves, and how it may hold us back from being who we are. When I was growing up – some say I haven’t yet – the recipe was to do well in school in subjects (split up between arts, science and business), do things outside of school, and to not get caught doing things that are wrong and to be seen doing things that are right.

But isn’t it all simply about being human? Don’t we forget that somehow in all these different goals we set out? For a while, all I did was technology because it was my way out of a bad place and bad time – but then, I grew beyond that and despite the world’s culture of specialization. Why must I devote all my time and energy to one facet of my life?

That’s stupid. But I did it for a while, and it catapulted me into more than one glass ceiling. A few broke, not all, but it’s hard to remember the ones broken through – it’s easy to remember the ones that bruised us as we crashed against it.

So I’ve come to a new conclusion over the last few days; being human is about the discovery of what it takes to be whole, and being whole is a dynamic thing.

That’s my rationalization until I come up with a better one.