Can You Describe Yourself With One Verb?
“So what’s your verb?
My friend Divya Dhaliwal asked me one summer evening in London, introducing me to the concept of identifying people using verbs.
It’s common for people to describe themselves using adjectives, but it’s much harder to define yourself using verbs, especially a single verb. That’s because verbs represent actions, which are 1) the building blocks of how we live day to day and 2) harder to hide behind biases inherent in adjectives. By distilling ourselves down to a single verb, we’re forced to face what drives our actions and what we stand for.
To find the proper answer, it might help to reflect on what made us feel alive as kids, that is before society told us what we should become.
My Verb is to “Serve”
I always wondered growing up why I had a powerful affinity towards certain concepts. For example, one of the most memorable movie scenes from my childhood is from the 1997 film ‘Life is Beautiful’ where Uncle Eliseo tells Guido (in the context of operating a restaurant):
“You’re here serving, you’re not a servant. Serving is the supreme art. God is the first of servants. God serves men, but he’s not a servant to men.”
Similarly, the concept of ‘Noblesse oblige’, which stands for one’s obligations and responsibilities that come with nobility, has resonated with me early on. My version of nobility has nothing to do with birth, status, or money. It has everything to do with character.
Thanks to Divya’s question, I was finally able to give my echoing thoughts a concrete voice. I realized that my verb is “to serve”. Let me elaborate.
First, service means serving another rather than serving myself, and it isn’t just limited to people. I could serve an idea, a cause, a company, a country. The key is to put whatever it is above myself. This has the useful side effect of keeping my ego in check and opening my mind to feedback and craft possibilities that lie beyond the realm of personal interest.
Second, as Eliseo says, serving doesn’t mean being subservient to others otherwise it dangerously devolves into following blindly. True service takes courage, discipline, and creativity because sometimes the solutions aren’t straightforward and my actions are met with resistance, cause short term pain, or go unacknowledged and unappreciated. Yet I carry on because I have determined that this is the best way to serve and achieve long term objectives.
Third, I can’t serve properly if my talents and skills won’t make a difference. Conversely, once the cause ceases to need me, I will consider moving on. In this way, the cause needs to be worthy of me and I need to be worthy of the cause. This concept determines which opportunities I join, which projects I launch, and which ones I leave behind.
What’s Your Verb?
After posing this rather abstract but insightful question to all of my close friends to better understand their natures, I’ve come across the following answers:
To Create
To Illuminate
To Support
To Heal
To Appreciate
To Lead
So, now the question is, what’s your verb?
