So Many Hats. (Too Many Hats?)
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Toddler had been begging for a new dinosaur hat. Her tiger one from last winter has grown too small. Finally, we agreed to go to the “hat store” and fulfill her wish. This winter has been nutty and I figured this purchase was a win-win: She gets what she wants and stays warm in the process. Fine. Well, we went to the hat store and guess what? Unsurprisingly, the pickings were slim. And that great green dino hat? It had been sold.
Toddler was a bit sad, but thankfully I had spied a hat stand at our local flea market. I explained to my babe that we would walk there and see what they had. She was remarkably flexible about this. Off we went. We were thrilled to see that there were tons of animal hats at the flea market. Baby zeroed in on an adorable sheep hat. We didn’t see a dino hat right away, but when we asked, we worked with the saleswoman (the one who made the hats!) to get creative and find something that could very well be a dino. And we did! I’m still not sure what creature it is, but it is green and has a dino-like mohawk and a little red tongue. Toddler is completely convinced it’s a stegosaurus. Victory on all fronts, no?
Now, if you know me at all, you know that I wouldn’t just write a post about purchasing new winter hats for my wee ones. Not that there is anything wrong with that. The truth is that when we came home with these new hats and the girls modeled them while scooting around our hardwood floors, my mind wandered as it tends to do. On this particular day, it wandered to…
Hats.
Yes, hats. Not animal hats, but metaphorical hats. Those proverbial hats we all wear as we go about our lives. I thought about all the hats I wear on any given day: Mother. Wife. Daughter. Sister. Friend. Writer. Blogger. Dreamer. Doubter. The list goes on and on. My existential closet? It’s filled with hats.
And this is a good thing, right? It’s wonderful to have and enjoy so many facets of myself. But sometimes I wonder whether it is possible to have, and to wear, too many hats? When we are constantly switching hats, and switching roles, do we in some important sense lose who we are? And who are we beneath the layers, without those hats?
I told you this post wasn’t just about hats. It’s about who we are and who we choose to be. The aspects of identity we select and those that select us.
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On any given day, how many hats do you don? What are these hats? Do you ever think that by alternating between so many hats we lose our heads, who it is we really are? How do you like my little dino and sheep?
Sometimes I forget to switch hats. I get to work stuck on something that happened before the kids went to school. Or, I get home and expect things to run as smoothly as they do in the office. And pretty soon (will you tell us…) you’ll be switching hats and gears again. I love all my hats but can get a little confused.
These days, my proverbial closet is filled with many–too many–hats, as well. I think that women tend to accumulate more of them (not the material type, which may be true also, but the type that reflect our expansive list of roles). I love being able to trade off hats, to switch one for another. Doing so can break up the long, sometimes monotonous days that stretch before me as a mother. But at times it is nice to settle in and wear just one, maybe that of someone drinking a glass of wine and watching the Bachelor. Which I will happily do tonight when the duties of motherhood are over.
It takes a lot to wear all the hats that we wear but it only makes us better and stronger.
I wear many hats. But I often wonder do I wear any of them really well or am I doing myself a diservice by only being average.
Sometimes I am the best friend anyone can have and sometimes I just get over whelmed and drop off the face of the earth.
Sometimes one hat gets all my attention and sometimes it gets none. Not sure where the balance is in that.
Hope you are feeling better this week.
Super cute hats!
Wearing lots of hats keeps life interesting. I’m pretty good at separating these different roles, but there are times when one takes over a bit too much. Happily, I got to play “mommy” for most of this weekend.
yes, yes, yes! i think it is wonderful to be flexible and able to meet (hopefully) the demands/needs of each position… but when do you take them all off? or wear your own? (for me it is a removal of all of them)… i think there must be time each day to just reconnect with oneself… i like to stand outside at night under the stars and just breathe… it makes me feel connected to so much – but allows me to fit into my ‘place’ within it… lately i have been suffocating under hats… i thank you for the post… because i had been neglecting to take my time… and, no, i don’t count running around in the car in between stops to be representative of down time…
so do i tempt you to search etsy for adorable hats? and do i warn you that the hat love doesn’t end? my 19 yr. old daughter adores all of her hats! and she knows how to search for them!
i was so sure there’d be not post waiting from you this morning. hope you’re false labor has eased up, at least.
but hats. i have to say that i sort of relish the different hats i wear, from mother to student to partner to stripped-down-self. while i definitely sometimes forget to shift between them (i feel you, lauren slayton), i feel like having the chance to explore my self in so many different realms and from so many different angles re-presents me to me over and over in a way that most often feels like possibility (and from time to time feels like a hamster wheel). when i feel stuck or befuddled by my role under one hat, stepping into a different role is so often illuminating, reassuring, reinvigorating, etc. which isn’t to say that i don’t get tired, that i don’t sometimes need to settle into one hat for a bit to regroup, because that happens, too.
and the hats you bought your girls? adorable!
Such cute hats! Yes… we do wear a lot of hats. My favorite is that of mother and sometimes I feel a little sad that my brood is so independent. I still have a couple years left before the empty nest, but I’m already dreading it. Luckily, I love my Grandma hat, too!
It is a topic that is on the minds of many bloggers. I am going to grab part of a comment I left elsewhere cuz it fits here too.
When I think about the hats we where I think about a quote from Pirkei Avot. It translates into English as being “Ethics of our Fathers.” This comes from Talmudic times.
It reads roughly like this:
“A man receives three names:
The name his parents give him at birth.
The name his friends call him by.
And the name he calls himself.”
And that is often how I picture my life. Friends and family see me one way, colleagues another, and readers of my blog yet another.
I shuffle through these hats on a regular basis, multiple times a day.
Oh yes, the metaphor of hats! Like most moms I know, I wear lots of them, and wouldn’t part with any of them most of the time.
In my work, I see lots of moms who struggle with what they think are ‘time management’ issues. What I tell them is that it’s no wonder we struggle with ‘what to do’ throughout the day. The reason we struggle with ‘what to do’ is that we first have to decide ‘who to be’ in every moment. Am I wearing my mommy hat? My coach hat? My school volunteer hat? My writer hat?
Once I know what hat I’m wearing, deciding what to do gets a lot easier.
All of our potential hats mean that we’re in a near-constant state of existential crisis trying to figure out which one to put on at any given moment. And when we’re wearing one, we’re often thinking we should be wearing another. (Mommy time or writing time to take just one example!)
Some people look cute naturally. I look goofy in hats. What does that say about me in the context of this post??? I think women relate to this metaphor.
Those hats are just precious! We all wear a lot of hats for sure. Lately I have been trying to merge them all together. Meaning I just try and be genuinely me. Seems easy enough, but it’s actually a struggle not to always compartmentalize and wear certain hats only at certain times. Whatever works best for you is great. Make it work.
Little kids in hats are so cute! Boys or girls, they wear them well. As for my hats, yes, I wear them all. Some fit better than other. Some look better than others. But they are all me and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Variety is the spice of life, no?
Sometimes I feel like I have too many hats and that life would be simpler if I could just hang a few up…but I’m not really willing to give any of them up. Mother, wife, sister, daughter, mediator, employee, cook, caregiver…there are just so many. These days I’m just trying to stop trying to fix other people’s problems…thanks for a thought provoking (as always) post. Amber
ps. I love hats with faces!
I have often wondered about this myself, especially the idea that we may lose a part of our identity each time we put on a different hat. It’s almost like the loss of poetry in translation, we still get the message but it is missing its original sparkle.