Of Identity and Purpose
- Tamara Gutverg, Excel Business 2017

All your life you have sat very comfortably at the tip of the iceberg. A little bit of a cliché, I know. But have you ever had the experience of suddenly realizing that for the longest time you have actually been oblivious to the giant lying underneath you? In the past couple of years I have been thrust into a phase in life in which I am bound to ask (and attempt to answer) many of the oh-so-terrifying Big Questions. Naturally, the first to arise has been related to the definition of my identity — of who I am. I have always been quite familiar with myself: my likes, my dislikes, my fears, what pushes me forward in life. However, when it came to stating what I identify myself with in a much wider sense like my community, my country or my religion, I always delivered an instinctive answer — or a statement of the facts. I am 23 years old, I am Mexican and I am a Jew. It always seemed so clear to me — and in a way it still does. But as I started the process of questioning what this sense of belonging actually entails, things took on a completely different meaning.
When faced with a question about one’s own identity, it almost seems like the default reaction is to simply state the obvious. We are so comfortable with a certain norm that we often fail to look beyond what is apparent. We simply believe that our identity is already quite absolute.
For most of my life, I had been certain of my identity as a member of the Mexican-Jewish community. I knew that this heritage played a crucial role in defining who I was, but I had never really wondered about the different layers that were part of the concept of this identity. Frankly, I had never even stopped to consider the notion of identity at all.
All of a sudden I found myself starting to think about it and, just like that, I was launched into an enormous world of extended intricacy. Stating my identity or sense of belonging to my community no longer felt like enough. I had to understand it within its chaos, to make sense of the endless questions that never ceased to come up. I had to decide what I wanted to keep and what I wished to reject. I was confronted with diverging views, and therefore ended up being exposed to a different sense of what reality even meant. I opened my eyes and for the first time I noticed the gigantic mountain that the iceberg actually is.
A few months ago, I had a very interesting discussion with my father regarding the process of developing a person’s sense of identity. It was not about questioning whether identity is necessary or not, but rather about whether its true complexity is ever appreciated. Why are we never told that such complexity is inherent to our core — to who we are as people? That’s what I asked my dad. And it was something about his answer that made me realize that I was about to gain some clarity onto how I could actively form this identity — and not just take it at face value.
When you are a kid, you need a certain structure in order to understand your sense of belonging to something larger. You have your family, you go to school, you hang out with friends… All these factors contribute to the process of forming a community that will shape how you come into your own.
My dad asked me to picture the following scenario: could I imagine if I had grown up within a structure plagued by uncertainty and endless possibilities? Of course not. It would have been like constructing a building over a shifting foundation — it would undoubtedly fall.
You need to build a solid foundation, he said. You need to make sure that it is strong enough to support the building as it is being built up. Once it has been erected, you will certainly have to make a few adjustments. After some time the building will need further maintenance and renovations; however, that work will not be executed by the original builder… it is a responsibility that will lie fully upon the landlord.
The same thing goes for bringing up an individual: You create a solid foundation to provide a sense of identity and purpose. You need to trace those guidelines so they can appreciate that they are a part of something bigger than their own… But you can never achieve that through a blurry definition.
I had never thought of it this way, yet I realized immediately that it was true! I was so rattled by the uncertainty that this whole process had brought along that I knew it was something I could never have dealt with before. Still, life made me question my identity — and though it has been a difficult process, I feel so much richer because of it. The understanding of who I am has gained an entirely new sense that it did not possess before — and in a way it assures me that, though there will be an endless stream of questions down the road, I am on a path that feels like home.
I guess the reason why I am sharing this story is that my experience with Excel has contributed to the process that I have discussed above. As I mentioned, my Judaism is a really big part of my identity — and always has been. It is the community that I speak of in this story of self-recognition. It is the part of my identity that has always been so close to who I am that I had not even began to break it down until not too long ago.
I have gone through many phases: questioning, transformation, interpretation, re-appropriation… I have felt the responsibility of making my Judaism my own, of having it come to life with these internal deliberations. But I can tell how much I have gained through the external discussions that I have experienced as part of Birthright Excel. I have been incited to question my identity along with others, to see it from different angles, to listen to diverging opinions. And I have come to realize that it is not just a matter of understanding one’s identity, but of discovering the purpose that it inevitably brings along.
There are many more aspects to a personal identity, and I suppose their combination fills us with tenacity to follow our purpose and achieve what we want in the long run. We are in the pursuit of a life full of meaning; we have the need to transcend. It is because of our ability to handle the giant beneath the iceberg — and the bravery that we master to confront it, that our identity can be charged with enough significance to excel further on.
Tamara Gutverg is a member of the Birthright Israel Excel 2017 Cohort, interning at The Bridge. She studies at Universidad Iberoamericana where she is pursuing a Bachelor’s Degree in Communication with a minor in Digital Media. She will graduate in December 2017. Tamara is from Mexico City, Mexico.


