On Roles

Buttery, rich, & substantial. One of these words does not describe the topic of this essay.

Alas, there is nothing buttery concerning a discussion of social roles. You & I occupy a variety roles to various degrees at various stages of our lives. Though the word 'role' may invite the tangential connection to a play or drama, here I focus on the everyday roles human beings occupy. I will not attempt an exhaustive & systematic treatment of the way we relate to one another. Rather, I hope to clarify & examine what comes so naturally that we risk neglecting the richness & substantiality of our embodied relationships.

If you type in the word 'Oxford' into your Apple podcast app, you will discover a multitude of lectures from the University of Oxford ranging in topics from the elements of drawing to quantum mechanics to aesthetics & philosophy of art. I know this because I now subscribe to all these lectures (and more!). Upon first listen, I assumed this eclectic body of knowledge contained simple, concise articulations of the very project of each field of study. However, I now know that half the work most lecturers devote their lives to involves defining their very field of study! Thus I continue to discover the immense difficulty of offering a 'final' definition coupled with the supremely helpful task of asking, "Wait, what are we doing?"

It is in this tentative spirit I embark on the topic of social roles. Rather than offer a definition, I will frame the discussion of roles as concerning the questions: Who am I to you? Who is this particular person to that particular person in such a particular situation? Thus the question is framed in both relational & conditional terms.

If I were to ask you what roles you occupy, I imagine your responses might include parent, daughter, teacher, fire-putter-outer, coffee maker, confidant, citizen, spouse, counselor, mentor, chef, and so on. Each of these roles includes a set of actions, attitudes, & excellences associated with the way you relate to another person or persons. In this way, roles seem to be the ways we embody the specific relationships that we have with other people. A parent occupies their role in relationship to a child, a mentor to the mentee, a fire-putter-outer to those she is charged to protect. We appear to demarcate roles in reference to some other person or persons & the conditions we happen to find ourselves in, such as when the children of elderly parents transition to also occupy the role of caregiver.

Much of the conversation surrounding our social roles concerns the questions of traditional roles and the apparent arbitrariness to which we 'assign' roles based on given conditions (whether gender, sex, status, race, age). So, are our social roles merely arbitrary constructs? To me, roles do seem to be constructed far from sheer arbitrariness. Arbitrary implies whim & chance, as if a doctor told a patient to open their mouth only to throw a handful of Tylenol at them, calling whatever made it in the proper dosage. Instead, our social roles develop within one's distinct framework of community, occupation, & adaptation. To equate a social role with arbitrariness is to risk neglecting the resources your community have handed down so that you might discover substance beyond mere adaptation.

Thus roles are also, in this sense, constructed from intentional adaptation. Yet this does not preclude roles from being freely chosen or inflexible. Now to be sure, there are roles within any society which ought to be added, removed, reformed, & redefined, such that what has been handed down does not become a dead system incapable of adapting to the concerns & needs of a generation. Though it should never have existed in the first place, the relationship of master to slave has been rightly removed in practice within the American society. Relationships between parents & children continue to grow with the added complexity of institutional education & a world connected by the internet.

At this point you may be asking, "Why do roles matter?" To answer this question, I'll give an example from my own context. I attended a Christian liberal arts college where many students (including myself) encounter the murky waters of Christian dating. I don't mean to imply that dating is categorically different for Christians than anyone else. Rather, you just feel much much MUCH more pressure in a context where dating is presented as "Can I see myself marrying this person?" from the start. Thus nearly every night on campus you just might hear rumblings of a DTR (define the relationship). Somewhere this very instant, I can guarantee some Christian college freshman are asking one another, "So...are we dating now?" If it's a no, they return once again to the friendzone. If they answer yes, they will begin to discuss what flavors are acceptable in a wedding cake. (I jest, but not as much as you might think!)

In everyday life, roles matter for the sake of clarity. In family systems counseling, it is important for each member of a family to understand how they are seen & see themselves. For me, it took 22 years to see I lived into the peacemaker role in my family. Rather than express my own opinions, feelings, & desires, I tended to push them down in order to keep everyone else happy & content in times of conflict. In the process of clarifying my role in a family, I discovered how ultimately unhelpful & unhealthy this role was for me & my family. Being the peacemaker kept me from living into my truer & better roles as son, brother, grandson, & friend.

For you, just consider your friendships. Have you asked who your friends are to you? Have they taken on additional roles such as caretaker, enabler, priest, or partner? The answer may depend on the day or the situation! The role structures in a family & workplace arise more visibly & rigidly than those arising from friendships. It is for this reason that many friendships sour as expectations remain unclarified or unnamed. A relationship developing from a shared love may transform, when unattended, into a series of letdowns, frustrations, & hurts. While we often ask how to make friends. We rarely clarify our expectations & roles with friends, especially in times of transition (such as when you start a new job, get married, or have a child). Relationships change when the conditions change.

Much like the brilliant Oxford lecturers, we would do well to ask, "Wait, who am I to you?" A dear professor of mine describes the big-picture goals for any team or group of people to be: (1) oriented, (2) safe, & (3) valued. We err in our societal & communal roles if we fail to clarify who we are to one another. We err when our roles are so rigid or unhealthy that we feel unsafe to name what we actually want & experience. We err when we take our relationships for granted and devalue those who are in our community. We succeed when we see the people in our society & community, understand our relationship to them, & aspire to achieve the goods we all agree are worth achieving for one another. Aristotle believed man is at heart a political creature, that human beings can only be the fullness of what we intend to be in a rich community with one another. So, the next time you break bread, make sure you know your roles.