Who Am I When I Remove My Job, Surname, Status and Instagram Bio?

8 Uncomfortable Questions Modern Life Asks Ancient Wisdom: Day 6

As a child, I saw two very different sides of money.

There were years when life felt lavish and luxurious. Then losses in business changed the picture. The lifestyle changed, but something else changed too: people.

Some behaved differently when the status was no longer the same. Some relationships became distant. A few stayed exactly as they were. They valued the person, not what surrounded the person.

I was young, but the lesson stayed with me. Status is a bright light. Under it, admiration, convenience and genuine affection can look almost identical. When that light becomes weaker, the difference is easier to see.

Years later, my own labels kept changing. Scientist. MBA student. Founder. Indian living in Scotland. None could explain who I was during the periods when I felt lost, uncertain or depressed.

So who are we when the introduction no longer impresses anyone?

When the Label Enters the Room Before We Do

Today, people often meet our summary before they meet us.

LinkedIn gives them our career. Instagram gives them our chosen personality. A surname may reveal family or social position. A university name or job title quietly tells people how much attention to give us.

We learn to introduce ourselves through nouns: founder, doctor, mother, director, creator, millionaire.

The nouns are not false. The danger is allowing them to become the entire truth.

Then a business failure feels like a personal failure. Losing a job feels like losing respect. We may continue living a life that no longer feels right because we are frightened of becoming difficult to introduce.

Ancient stories understood this problem long before Instagram bios existed. Again and again, they removed a person’s palace, title, comfort or public approval and asked: what is left now?

Chandanbala Without Her Palace

Jain tradition tells the story of Vasumati, a princess who lost her kingdom, freedom and status. She was captured, sold and later known as Chandanbala. She was hungry, humiliated and kept in chains.

Yet when Mahavira came seeking alms, she offered the simple food available to her.

The palace had disappeared. The title of princess had disappeared. Her freedom had been taken. Her capacity to give had not.

Chandanbala later became an important Jain disciple. Her worth does not begin when she becomes respected again. It is already visible when society has placed her at the bottom.

Perhaps our true self is not the version that appears when life obeys us. It is the version that appears when life has taken away our usual advantages.

When I have less power, do I become cruel?

When I am not being praised, do I still act with dignity?

When I am hurt, can I still recognise another person’s need?

Bharata and the Mirror

Another Jain story describes Emperor Bharata entering a room of mirrors in royal clothes and ornaments. When a ring came off, the bare finger appeared unattractive beside everything decorated around it. He removed the other ornaments and saw how much of the image depended on what had been added.

The mirror gave him an uncomfortable truth. He had confused decoration with identity.

We do something similar today. We add a company name, salary, postcode, follower count and carefully written bio. Then we look at the completed image and say, “This is me.”

But which part is the person, and which part is the ornament?

Bharata’s story asks us to see achievement clearly. An ornament can be beautiful without becoming the skin.

Krishna Recognised Sudama Before His Clothes

In the Bhagavata Purana, Sudama visits Krishna carrying a humble gift. They had studied together, but their lives had taken very different paths. Krishna was a king. Sudama lived in poverty.

Krishna did not make Sudama prove that he deserved an audience. He welcomed him with warmth and honour.

This is the kind of relationship business loss revealed to me years ago. Some people recognise the status first and the person second. A few recognise the person so fully that status becomes almost irrelevant.

We often ask, “Who will stay if I lose everything?” There is another question worth asking: “Whom do I treat differently because they have nothing useful to offer me?”

Our real values are visible in both answers.

Harishchandra When Nobody Called Him King

The story of King Harishchandra appears in several Hindu texts, including the Markandeya Purana. Through severe trials, he loses his kingdom and wealth and works at a cremation ground. The man once addressed as king has no royal appearance left.

What remains is his commitment to truth.

We do not need to believe pain is automatically noble. Hardship can exhaust and frighten people. The insight lies elsewhere: principles are easiest to claim when they cost nothing.

The toughest periods do not always create our character. They often reveal which parts were real and which depended on comfort, praise or convenience.

Why This Question Matters Now

A Pew Research Center survey found that 39 per cent of US workers considered their job or career extremely or very important to their overall identity. Work can provide purpose and belonging. It can also carry more of our self-worth than it can safely hold.

A 2025 review of 32 studies on adolescents found that online activity mattered more than screen time alone. Authentic self-presentation was associated with clearer identity, while presenting a version far from the real self was linked with less clarity. The research could not prove cause and effect, but it raises a question for every age: is my profile expressing my life, or is my life being edited to protect my profile?

Write the Bio Nobody Can See

Take your usual introduction and remove every title. Then answer four questions:

1. What remained? Which values survived when money, certainty or recognition became smaller?
2. Who remained? Who treated you with the same respect when there was less advantage in knowing you?
3. How did you behave? What did difficulty reveal about your patience, honesty, generosity or ego?
4. What will you carry forward? If success returns, which truth from the difficult period must not be forgotten?

Now rewrite your bio using verbs instead of titles.

Not “I am a founder,” but “I build and take responsibility.”

Not “I am successful,” but “I keep my word when it becomes inconvenient.”

Not “I come from a respected family,” but “I treat people with respect when nobody is watching.”

Titles tell the world what chair we are sitting in today. Character shows who is sitting in it.

My childhood taught me that money can change a home and status can change a room. It can even change the way some people look at us. It cannot decide who we are unless we allow their changing behaviour to become our mirror.

Perhaps the people who stay during the fall are not only showing us who they are. They are reminding us who we were before the world became impressed.

So remove the job, surname, status and Instagram bio.

What remains may be harder to display, but much more difficult to take away.

References

• Jain Heritage, “Detached Bharat”: https://www.herenow4u.net/index.php?id=64799
• Jainworld, “Chandanbala”: https://jainworld.com/literature/jain-stories/chandanbala/
• Bhagavata Purana, the story of Krishna and Sudama, Book 10, Chapters 80 and 81: https://vedabase.io/en/library/sb/10/80/
• Harishchandra and the Markandeya Purana tradition: https://www.britannica.com/topic/Harishchandra
• Pew Research Center, “How Americans View Their Jobs,” 2023: https://www.pewresearch.org/social-trends/2023/03/30/how-americans-view-their-jobs/
• Avci, Baams and Kretschmer, “A Systematic Review of Social Media Use and Adolescent Identity Development,” 2025: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40894-024-00251-1

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