Tony Campolo, who for years was a professor at the University of Pennsylvania and now teaches at Eastern College, says that every year, usually in May, students come into his office, look at him across the desk, and say, “Doc, I’m not coming back next semester.”
Campolo then whips off his glasses, tries to look “professorial” and says, “Dear student, tell me why?”
They always look at him with a strained look and say, “I need time, Doc, I need time.”
Campolo thinks to himself , This guy’s done nothing with his life for the last six months – and now he needs time? But the student goes on, saying, “I need time to find myself. I’m tired of playing all these roles that society says I have to play. I’m tired of being who my friends expect me to be, who my parents expect me to be, who the system expects me to be. I’ve got to peel away each of these socially prescribed roles. I’ve got to peel them away – do you hear? – and come to grips with the core of my being, the essence of my personality!”
Tony says he now responds to this with a simple question to the student: “Friend, suppose that after you peel away each of these socially prescribed identities, after you peel away each of these socially created selves, you discover you are an onion!” You peel away all of the skins of the onion, and what’s left? Nothing! The onion is nothing more than the sum total of its skins. “So could it be,” Campolo continues, “that you are nothing more than the sum total of all the roles society has trained you to play. And after you peel away each of those selves and take a long journey
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