I can’t remember the first time someone asked me, “What do you want to be when you grow up?" For a child, it’s a pretty daunting question. Although well-meaning grown-ups who pose it are usually just trying to make conversation, children soon learn the subtext: What’s important to you? Who might you emulate? What are your dreams? How competent are you? Of course, the underlying question is: “Who are you?” You don’t have to be a child to worry about that.

One way to define yourself is through your work, which makes me a magazine editor and college administrator. But that definition also presents a problem. I haven’t always been an editor—I’ve also earned my keep as an art teacher, carpenter, and graphic designer. I’ve driven a tractor. I was a cashier in a restaurant. As much as our society would have us believe it, a job—even a long career—is not an identity. If I want a better idea of who I am, I have to look deeper.

I look to my relationships with others. I am a son, brother, husband, father, cousin, and uncle. I’m a friend, volunteer, coach, committee member, leader, and follower. I am also an employee, colleague, and boss. Most of these relationships are lasting, engaging, and satisfying—but is this who I am?

In basic biological terms, I am an animal. I move and breathe and eat and reproduce. I’m one link in a genetic chain that reaches back millions of years, and that now, because I have children, has a chance at reaching forward. And because I am a human being, I have the chance to do more than just live, reproduce, and die; I have the opportunity to think about it, to decide how I feel, to listen to others, to wonder, to speculate, to learn.

The best part of living is learning. Learning brings change—new truths new ideas, new skills. Whether I learn to knit or read a novel or contemplate new information about the origin of the universe, when I learn something, it changes me. The best way for me to answer the who am I question may be to quote Descartes: “I think, therefore I am.”

On the cover of this issue, we pose a similar question: “Are you a Renaissance soul?” In the accompanying article, we meet six Swarthmore alumni, including Margaret Lobenstine ’65, who coined the term and fits her own description of a Renaissance soul. They are restless people with diverse passions, the square pegs that don’t fit round holes. Yet, most of the liberally educated readers of this magazine can truthfully say about themselves, “I’m one, too.”

So, what do I want to be when I grow up? If “growing up” means I have to choose just one thing to “be,” forget it. I don’t want to grow up.

—Jeffrey Lott