WHAT IS A PROFESSIONAL?

When someone asks you that, what do you respond?  I know what I respond.  It is an answer I heard many, many years ago.  "A professional is someone who gets paid for doing what most other people do for fun."

I don't know where I heard it and I don't know who said it, but there it is.  Then one day I was in school and we were studying the history of the Revolutionary War.  We were studying about the Green Mountain Boys.  (Remember Ethan Allen?  No, I did not Google it.)  During that time I remember that we heard about Hessians.  The good nun explained that these were German men who practiced a profession called "Mercenary."  Then she explained what that meant.  Whooo Boy!  These guys were fighting real wars for money.  That's quite an idea for a nine or ten year boy to assimilate.  These guys were doing something that people had to be forced to do and they were doing it for fun and $ !!  It took me about one pico-second to decide that "mercenary" would not be my profession.  You have to remember that I knew about war.  It was right there on the front pages every night.  It was on the Honor Roll Boards in every city.  It was the stars that were in the windows of people who had lost a son or a father.  No, sirreee, no mercenary stuff for me.  Baseball was my mercenary target. 

How did I get this thought?   Well, someone asked me in an email:  "What is your profession, by the way?"  This is a person with whom I have exchanged some emails on religious and theological matters.  I was in the mood to answer, so here's what I said:  "Within the purview of that definition, (The one above) I do not have a profession.  What I do have, is passion, not always well organized in its expression.  I am intellectually eclectic, but my butterfly intellect has a predilection for looking at the world through Philosophy and Theology rather than "Hard Science."  This path was inspired to me from an early age and continues to be defined by me into the individual that I am and am becoming."  I added my educational documentation and then added, "Along the road of life I have progressed from being raised and educated in a bi-lingual, bi-cultural environment to keeping myself immersed in a multi-cultural ambience where my command of Latin languages and two Filipino languages keeps life interesting, emotionally and intellectually.  I am married, 35 years now, and have two adult sons who are what they are because of my saintly wife and her saintly mother.  The core of my being is dedicated to teaching.  It has always been thus, even when I was quite young.  I learn and I teach others about what I learn." 

The response I gave was longer than this, but there are some other thoughts in it that I have to come back to.  I said some things that I didn't know I have in me.  A couple of them are rather interesting.  I will slide them your way before too long.  So now you know that I am not a professional.  You also know that I not a Hessian.  

Finally, if you want to get a little nerdy about things, I seem to remember  that the Romans had Hessian (Germanic) mercenaries.  I was young when I think I heard that, so if you're curious enough, you can look it up.  Sergei Brin might know the answer to that one.