Who Are We?
A brief note on identity and the many sources that create us. #MayIWrite — Day 21
Matters of identity are unanimously fascinating to me because so much of it exists within the perception of those with whom we are interacting. I think one of our great quests in life is to connect with the things in ourselves which are fundamental and constant, rather than the layers which are created, projected or amplified by others’ experience of us.
Over the course of a day my own experience of my identity can vary widely and this is usually met with a need for solitude and reintegration — connecting to some kind of baseline before the day is out.
I am a mother and care provider of various types. Sister, daughter, friend… I am a partner and I am a love interest. I can exist in the world in a way that provides me with the shelter of heterosexual privilege, even though that is not the best reflection of my identity. At other times I navigate the world visible in my queerness (and it is indeed a different world). I am an educator and sometimes that is to parenting groups but other times it is within the kink community. There are polar differences in these experiences in the world, though they are all truths of my identity.
For me, my most efficient experience of integration and connection with myself is when I am writing, painting, or singing / playing music.
In many of these circumstances of externally-reinforced identity, I feel a sense of objectification — an awareness that one aspect of my whole has been amplified and flattened when the immediate community does not locate my identity in that moment as just a part of my greater whole. Others’ projections make me watchful, as I have learned in the past that I can internalise these ideas and create dissonance in my own sense of identity.
Can we really extricate a fundamental sense of identity from the web of experiences that occur in connection with others? Who would we have been without the influences of others? There’s no way to find out, of course. Identity can also shift subtly and drastically as time passes, yet fundamental parts of ourselves remain intact. Humanity is fascinating — we the animals who spend so much time contemplating ourselves. Who are we? And who will we become tomorrow?
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