two hundred. twenty six.

i walk often and i'm reading three books, and one of them is about walking. it's excellent. all of my journal is filled with quotes from others recently, i've nothing of my own.

In Ireland no one ever really asked me what I did. As in, just after meeting someone your next question is: "So what do you do?"

If they did ask me, it was after several moments of preliminary conversation, establishing a base for who I was before asking what I did.

Does this make sense?

It was so nice not to be asked that, to have to tuck that question away as I was over there. People would call me out for using it: 

"You Americans, always asking people what they do, you all have to know what people do. It's a status thing for you. You have to know where I rank."

I've known that I hated that question, but never realized what life was like without it.
I'm so accustomed to feeling forced to ask that question to form any sort of initial relationship with a stranger, and so accustomed to feeling forced to answer that question in a comfortable, impressive way. 

You know what I mean by comfortable?

:: In order for our interaction to proceed in a usual fashion, I'll need to answer the question in a way that puts you at ease by leading off with an aspect of my life centered around my education or work at the time. 

Heaven forbid I shun convention and make you uncomfortable by giving you other sorts of information about how I spend my time, information that won't immediately compute. You might not know where to file it and how to respond. 

Here, we are all so task-oriented that we value the lives of others based on what they do.
If they spend their time in efficient ways, doing "worthwhile" things, like maintaining the pattern of a busy life. 

Ex: in a speech for a graduating class recently: "Get out of the slow lane, get into the fast lane."

Once, I had met this guy and like a good conversationalist asked him what he did. He said he was a financial analyst. 

I asked him if he enjoyed it, because that doesn't seem like the kind of job that someone IS, in the way that an artist or writer is usually both a job description and the defining essence of a person. 

He stopped for a long moment before saying, "You know what, no one has ever asked me that before."

In Ireland, the first question would most often be a "why" question, which is so revealing.

Instead of asking what it is that you do, ask why you are doing it. 

So, in the context of a traveler, they would ask me why I was traveling. And since I was traveling, why Ireland? 

Then more questions: what had I seen, what had I loved? 

They asked me if it was different than I thought it might be, if it was my first time out of the country. 

They asked me where I lived, if I enjoyed it there, if I would come back to Ireland. 

They asked me where I was going next, and proceeded to fill in any and all gaps with their own personal experience of Ireland, giving me suggestions and so much history. 

I love this way of being introduced to a person because you gain all sorts of insight into their character before peering into the mechanics of how productive they are. They knew what I ached for before they knew what I did for a paycheck.

And maybe it's too idealistic and grand to put it that way, but it did alter how I view introductions. Ask more "why" questions. Ask why when someone tells me they're a student or a teacher or artist or financial analyst. 

I asked a man in a pub why he was a teacher. Without missing a beat he said because it was important for him to preserve the language. He grew up on the West Coast, where people still spoke it in their homes, and it was a way of life that was too crucial to let go. 

It occurred to me then that if I had asked the financial analyst why he was a financial analyst, I don't know if he would have had an answer.

This is so much later than I meant to stay up tonight. Tomorrow we're building raised beds and planting lots and lots before running to find some water to sit by. These days.