Identity is the beliefs, qualities, personalities, and looks that make an individual or a group of people. It is a concept that someone develops in the course of life. This involves several aspects of life that we don’t have any control over. This includes Family, culture, friends, personal interests, and surrounding environments that influence our daily lives. Some of these aspects can have a lot of influence while others may not have a great impact on our way of life. For example, family and culture may influence our lives like our personal sense of responsibility, ethics, and morals., while our surroundings and friends may influence the way we clothe, what kind of music we like, and even our social activities.
Understanding our identity gives us a sense of belonging, helps us discover our capabilities and strengths, and weaknesses. It gives us happiness and a feeling of the fulfillment of our heart desires and perceives others in society. It provides the kind of knowledge we need to avoid errors, make choices like our career paths deal with challenges, and how we deal with others in life and perceive the environment we live in.
Self-identity helps us to know our capabilities. The choices we make in life depend on whether we know who we are and what we want to achieve in life. According to TED Fellow Eddie Huang on identity, living is not about competing with people, it’s all about competing with ourselves. The most important thing is to understand and identify our abilities. This includes self-identity in terms of limitations when it comes to achieving a given goal or desire. One must understand what he or she is able to do and differentiate from what other people are able to do in life because you are unique in existence. From my experience in society, there was a boy in our society who could not do well in class work. Every time an exam was done his results were very pathetic and even discouraging with the fact that he could even score a zero in some subjects such as Mathematics. Everyone used to look down upon him because he was a dwarf academically. Even his parents and siblings used to make very unfair statements about him concerning his weakness in classwork. His academic journey came to an end before he had any reasonable academic certificate but he was good at singing. After leaving school, he started singing on various occasions in society to entertain people. Unexpectedly, everybody loved his voice and creativity in singing whenever he was performing. Later on in life, he was fortunate to succeed in the music industry and he even emerged as one of the best artists in the society. Source of income was no longer his problem as the singing talent of was attracting a lot of money in his life making him one of the richest people in the society. Here he realized that his abilities don’t lie in books but in singing.
Identity keeps us unique and distinguishes us from everyone else. God created each of us differently for a reason. When we know who we are, we are able to identify our strengths and weaknesses in order to make logical decisions in life. For instance, when I was in high school, I used to have no peace of mind within myself because I was trying so hard to lead the whole class in each and every exam. I wanted to be always at the top only to realize that some of my fellow students could always beat me however much I could put my effort into digging deep into the books all the time. Some of my fellow students who used to do better than me in examinations were not even close to their books all the time as opposed to me who was ever with books struggling to lead the class. When I listened to a speaker talking about understanding one’s ability, I came to realize that my ability in academics was different from my fellow students’ abilities. I had to change my attitude start working in accordance with my abilities and stop competing with others since it was beyond my ability.
When we understand ourselves, it becomes our source of happiness. It gives us the strength to fulfill our heart desires. According to Baggini’s “TED: Is There A Real You”, you have calls that tell the real you and people have different calls in life. The call here means what someone would want to do or be in life and it is different from one person to another. This call is driven by different things in life such as memories, desires, beliefs, experiences, and some other things. Baggini says “You are a collection of components, and this is the reason why you are different.” He goes on and uses water as an example by saying that water is made of two components (two molecules of hydrogen and oxygen) and in the same way you are also made up of complex components, inside you there is more than what is seen. This thing inside helps us fulfill our heart desires. In continuation, he says that your true self is not something you go look for, then you can never find it but it is something you discover and create. When you discover the latter it becomes your source of happiness.
The way we perceive others in the society is very important. We come across different categories of people and therefore we have to realize the effect we have on them. Having a sense of identity of who we are helps us understand and acknowledge other people’s presence around us and their opinions. It makes us understand and respect other people’s norms and culture.
Identity gives us a sense of belonging to our culture. culture is one of the factors that build identity in an individual. In a situation where someone has confidence in his or her culture and is proud to identify himself or herself with that culture without any fear of discrimination whatsoever. For instance, an African should be proud of his culture as an African and the same should apply to any other race without fearing identifying oneself based on his or her real culture. A Chinese should be proud to be Chinese identifying himself with the Chinese culture and the same applies to every other race.
In conclusion, Identity is certainly unavoidable. It is part of all our lives. Our moves form our identity, and in flip, our identity shapes our actions. When we try to avoid the concept of identity it doesn’t help, or rather it makes us unconscious and lose our self-esteem.
Identity comes from desire; desire comes from identification. On a day-by-day basis, the movements you take, the humans you spend time with, and the principles you choose to guard will define your identity. Maintaining our self-identity keeps us comfortable.
Our identity is a very vital factor in life. It is the only way we can understand what we do why we do it, and who we are. It helps us answer the questions: Who, What, Where, When, Why, and how. For us to get correct answers to these questions we need to understand our identity by reflecting on our beliefs and values.
According to Baggini’s “TED: Is There A Real You”, there is a way in which people identify themselves based on cultural issues. For instance, many people believe that their personalities are shaped according to the Chinese horoscopes. This idea is based on the fact that our dates of birth influence our identity. A person born in the month of January would have a personality of being conservative and by continually believing in this he or she ends up being a conservative person.
The sooner we embrace ourselves, flaws and all, the sooner we rid ourselves of insecurities and become comfortable with who we are. We become more aware of our immediate environment and our place in it.