Don’t Worry, Your Identity Has Value

When someone asks me to describe myself, I normally begin with things like my name, my nationality, my profession etc. So, I may say, ‘hello, my name is Harry, I’m from Wales and I’m an English teacher’. Even in that sentence, I might have added more detail than I actually needed to.

What would’ve been wrong with, ‘my name is Harry and I’m a British teacher’? Of course, there wouldn’t have been anything wrong with it. But, then again, there are thousands of teachers from the UK, so the question is, ‘how am I any different from the rest of them?’

I imagine that for a lot of people who don’t have extraordinary fundamental qualities there usually has to be something that stands out in that description. ‘Hello, my name is Bob and I’m the French ambassador to China’ normally draws more attention than ‘hello, my name is Bob and I’m a plumber’ (no disrespect intended towards plumbers).

You might’ve noticed in the description I gave of myself that I said I was from Wales rather than the United Kingdom. That’s because out of all of the Americans (indeed people from other countries, too) I’ve met that have heard me say I’m from Wales, the vast majority have replied with something along the lines of, ‘that’s in England, right?’

For me, it’s always interesting to talk to someone who doesn’t know where your country is on a map. And with the few words that I know in Welsh, most people seem to think I’m speaking in Elvish.

But it’s interesting to think how one perceives being a Welshman who teaches English in Wales compared to a Welshman who teaches English in Brazil, where I currently live.

Being a Welshman in Wales provokes unsurprisingly few reactions. Being a Welshman in Brazil, on the other hand, is usually an occasion to invite the entire family over to meet this stranger from a far-off land.

Where you are and the people around you help you to determine your own identity. Sometimes it can be difficult to appreciate what it is that makes you an individual, but you should try seeing yourself from the perspectives of others. Especially from the perspective of people who are different from you. Your individuality helps form your identity.

So here is my point, and it’s primarily directed at those of you who are struggling to make yourself unique from everyone else: there are probably a lot of people just like me in Wales or scattered across the world and, while we may be basically the same, there is still value in who we are and we are individuals. There is also value in who you are, too. All that’s required is to see yourself from the perspective of someone different.

This April, the BBC released a series of articles exploring the issues of identity. For more information on those articles, follow this link to the website. #BBCIdentity