Part IV: Who Remains When the Business Card Disappears?

A few days ago, I decided it was time to tidy up. Not half-heartedly. Properly. Cupboard by cupboard. Drawer by drawer. I’ve always believed that when you tidy your home, you’re often tidying something inside yourself as well. You sort things out. Memories. Ballast. Perhaps even a small part of who you used to be.

My dog was fast asleep beside my desk, stretched out at my feet. His paws twitched as if he were galloping across a meadow. Perhaps he was chasing another dog. A squirrel. A butterfly. I recently read that we “dog parents” appear surprisingly often as the main characters in our dogs’ dreams. I like that thought. Perhaps we’re running across that meadow together. I smile. And open another drawer.

Inside, I find a stack of old business cards. With every single one, a memory returns. An inspiring conversation. A journey. A radio interview. Crisis communication. An event with two hundred guests. Stage fright. Courage. People.

I pick up one of the cards. Remarkable, I think. How much of a life can fit onto a few square centimetres of paper. Not just a name. A job title. A company. But encounters. Responsibility. Belonging. Achievements. Friendships. A small piece of fine card stock. Yet for many years I believed it said something essential about me.

Today, I’m no longer even sure whether I’ll ever need a business card again. Long before becoming ausgesteuert, I had already begun wondering what my professional future might look like. Not only because the labour market has become increasingly competitive. But also because I’ve joined that group politely referred to as “the over-fifties”—a generation people often talk about, until one day you begin wondering whether they’re still talking about you.

That afternoon, another question entered my mind. Who remains when the business card disappears? On LinkedIn, the answer seems remarkably straightforward. We list our skills. Preferably optimised for search engines. Executive Positioning. Strategic Reputation Management. Thought Leadership. Cross-Functional Alignment. I couldn’t help smiling. It all sounds rather impressive. Almost a little like the secret service.

But do those skills really tell us who a person is? Perhaps it would sometimes be more useful to make our LinkedIn profiles not only SEO-optimised… but also Life-Engine-Optimized. Maybe they would contain very different words. Empathy. Curiosity. Reliability. Humour. The ability to listen. Remaining calm when others lose theirs. Bringing people together. Making complexity understandable. Refusing to lose hope.

The longer I thought about it, the more the boundaries began to blur. Which of these qualities did I learn through my career? Which ones did life teach me? And does the distinction even matter?

Not long ago, a friend said to me, “You know, Simone, I’d really like to find out who I am.” I asked her, “Who would you like to be?” We spend an astonishing amount of time trying to discover who we are. Perhaps we shouldn’t leave our personal growth to chance. Perhaps personal growth isn’t really about discovering who we are. Perhaps it’s about deciding—day after day—who we want to be. What values we want to live by. What traces we want to leave in the lives of others. What we want to give back to the world. And whether, one day, we will be able to look back and quietly say: Yes. That’s the person I wanted to be.

I placed the business cards back into the drawer. Not because they had become meaningless. They tell an important part of my story. Just not the whole story.

By then, my dog had woken up. He wandered over to me. Rested his head gently on my knee. And looked at me. As if he were saying: Perhaps your business card was never the most interesting thing about you.