When the Sands Shift, Who Remains?

One of my favourite scenes in Lewis Carroll’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland is the moment when Alice meets the Caterpillar.

“Who are YOU?” said the Caterpillar.

Alice replied, rather shyly, “I—I hardly know, sir… at least I knew who I was when I got up this morning, but I think I must have been changed several times since then.”

Beneath its whimsy lies a truth that feels increasingly relevant in our times: identity is fluid. We change, often many times, throughout our life. As children, we have visions of who we will be when we are adults. When we are adults, who we are changes based on circumstances: whether or not we become parents, the work that we do, the people that we surround ourselves with, even where we focus our attention. These all work together to influence how we see ourselves and how we interact with the world. Like Alice, many of us reach moments where the person we were this morning no longer fits by evening.

We often tie our identity to external factors, like our jobs. We begin to believe we are what we do. But when the world inevitably shifts and our circumstances change, who remains?

In recent months I’ve seen this happen in real time. Colleagues in the development sector who have dedicated years of their lives to making the world a better place, suddenly find themselves jobless due to funding cuts. They grapple with a deep sense of uncertainty, their LinkedIn posts filled with grief and disbelief. “Who am I now?” they ask, though rarely in those exact words. With an identity tied to a job, and the job no longer there, they were lost.

I get it. Before joining the UN, I worked in the corporate world, where success was measured in shareholder value. My value was measured solely by how much I contributed to a positive, upward trending financial metric. Eventually, I realised that I wanted my work to mean something more, so I left to build my own social enterprises. When those ventures failed, I pivoted to consulting, and eventually my current role in the UN system. Each transition was a quiet unravelling of who I thought I was, followed by a deliberate rebuilding of who I was becoming.

At first, those shifts felt disorienting. I remember sitting at my desk during one of those in-between periods, trying to answer the same question Alice faced: Who am I now? Without the structure of a role, a team, a title, I felt unmoored. Over time, I realised I hadn’t lost my identity at all, only the outer shell that once contained it.

Our jobs can give us a sense of purpose, belonging, and direction. But they can also start to define us. When that happens, our identity becomes fragile, dependent on forces outside our control. If those forces change, as they inevitably do, we risk losing our sense of self along with them.

The Stoic philosopher Epictetus once wrote that we should distinguish between what is within our control and what is not. Our job title, our employer, even our professional reputation belong in the outer circle. What lies in the inner circle is far more stable: our values, our integrity, our curiosity, our willingness to learn and contribute. When we anchor ourselves there, we begin to develop what Nassim Nicholas Taleb calls anti-fragility, the ability not just to withstand shocks, but to grow stronger because of them.

Over time, I’ve come to see myself not as an employee, an entrepreneur or even as an HR professional, but as a lifelong learner who seeks to make a positive difference wherever I am. Whether I’m in a boardroom, a humanitarian setting, or in a dimly-lit office late at night, that identity doesn’t change. It’s the thread that runs through every chapter of my story.

If you’re navigating a transition of your own, especially one that feels like an ending, I invite you to look inward rather than outward. Don’t focus on the tasks you once performed, but on who you were while performing them. What energised you? What made you proud? How did you show up for others? These are the qualities that belong to you, the parts that no re-organisation, no contract, no external shift can take away.

In times of change, it’s tempting to hold on tightly to what was. But perhaps the wiser path is to hold on to who we’ve become. The person who has learned, adapted, cared, and contributed, no matter what changed beyond our control. And that, truly, is enough.

So, dear reader, the next time life asks you, “Who are you?”, I hope your answer comes not from a title, but from a place much deeper. An identity not built on shifting sand, but rooted in the steady soil of who you are becoming.

Until next week,

Ric