35031

What is the effect of identifying ourselves numerically?  Social insurance number.  Passport number.  Drivers licence number.  Student ID number.  At the Student Portal that allows me to access all my academic information, I type 35031 into the field as my user identification.  It rankles me every time.  After all, my friends call me Jenni.  Some call me Jennifer.  A few are allowed the honour of calling me J or Bee.  A few kids I've grown to love have taken to calling me G.  One calls me kohkum (grandma in Cree - a term of respect and affection).  The school?  The school calls me 35031.

After signing into the student portal, the welcome page greets me with a whole new set of numbers: 99.00, 98.00, 96.67, 106.00, 98.57, 97.00.  Those are my grades.  Sick, isn't it?

No, that's awesome!  you might say.  The grades are fine.  They don't have many places to go except down (which they most likely will... it's the nature of the beast), but that's not really a problem.  Or is it?  I would argue that we lean heavily on numerical values to interpret the world around us.  What about the number 8.90?  Does it look familiar?  Minimum wage.  What if I attached the number 16.50 to my job?  Or 25.00?  Would that change the way that I see myself?  The way that other people see me?  What if I decided to return to a 8.90 job?  Would you call me lazy?  Unmotivated?  Not a Type A personality?  Without real aspirations?  What then is the difference between a people who are labelled 56.80 or 78.00 or 98.10?  Library nerd?  Average?  Well-balanced?  Smart?  Stupid?  Needs to apply himself?  Needs to get a life?  There are certain assumptions that are made about me (by myself, and by other people), based on a simple set of numerical values.

Not only that, but the reduction of a person to a numerical label like 689 946 384 (not my real SIN number), or 35031 (my real student ID #) strips us of our face, our smile, our personality and character, our hopes and dreams, our lofty aspirations, our deepest fears.  

Or worse yet – do I (or someone else) somehow feel that I have elevated status as a result of my high numerical values, or the organizations that have offered to ascribe me with a numerical label (a Harvard student ID # or a Microsoft employee number)? Or, though I deny that arrogance, do I – deep in my heart – believe that I have more to offer to society as a result of my achievements? Are achievement, intellect, reason, rationality, and logic idols of Western culture? Think of someone who has a very limited intellectual capacity. Do I somehow believe that people are more or less worthy of love, and more or less capable of offering significant contributions to others based on my accomplishments? My intellect? My personality? My skills? My gifts, talents, roles? What will it take to reframe our beliefs about “us” and about “them” until we believe – to the very core of our souls – that we have neither more nor less to offer to the world around us than anyone else. How long until we no longer measure our worthiness on any scale except this one: I am significant and worthy of love – no questions asked, without any doubt – I have inestimable worth just as I am, on the basis of the fingerprints of the Maker of the universe on my very spirit.

Perhaps in a future blog, I will mull over my own insignificance in the context of God's enormity (a discussion that helps me understand the flip side of this coin), but I think I will leave that for another day. You are enough – just as you are – you have inestimable worth just as you are.  This is 35031... signing out.