What It Means to Be a Professional

Explosion. Source: Freepik.com

[Original post: 2025-03-27.]

The root of "professional" is to "profess".

It is to hold yourself accountable for what you have said, both good and bad. Some people like to say things just for fun, or only to get themselves out of trouble. They don't mean any of it. I've heard at least one person say that words are meaningless, and only actions counted. He was a lawyer.

At the level that I'm at, however, I insist that words not only have meanings, but that I am responsible for the things that I have declared. "Declared." It's a powerful word. It denotes the influence speech and text (and now also film and image) have on people's minds.

At a certain level of power, there is always a subset of people who believe the statement that you made, no matter what that statement is. So you have to be careful about what you say, because if there are people who believe what you said and something bad happens to them because of it, they're going to want an accounting from you. It is perhaps to evade this responsibility that this lawyer I knew said that words didn't mean much, and only trusted actions.

If that's that lawyer's world, then that's his world. But insofar as he uses that stance as a license to excuse himself from telling the truth or otherwise being accountable for what he says, his value to me as a professional declines. I might trust him to fight court cases, but not much else.

I have chosen to live differently. Here is a list of some statements I have held and accepted, even when they put me into uncomfortable positions:

1. Declarations take the form of commands to the mind and body. 

2. Every statement I make also applies to me. 

3. In a world with a heterogeneity of points of view or beliefs, a single statement may mean something different to different people. In a mentally, emotionally, physically, or otherwise diverse society, this will be accounted for. As a professional, it is important to understand that the first or most obvious meaning of a statement is not what everyone understands by it.

"May it be to you as you have said." This is how you deal with a heterogeneity of profession. If, for example, a certain work situation arises where there is disagreement about what should be done, and there is not an agreement about how the dispute should be resolved, one move is to have them tell me what they would do in that type of situation, and then say, "Let it be to you as you have said."

In other words, write your rules in any way you want, but you're going to be held accountable for them.

There is a great deal of power available in this. Choose your declarations wisely.