Identity, Morality and Personal Reality
Who are we minus the influence?
“In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.” — Erik Erikson
What inspired this topic is a keen interest in preserving one’s own identity and the okayness of disagreeing with people without fear of losing anything, be it friendship, approval, community, etc. And this has nothing to do with voicing your opinions on Twitter, calling people out or fighting with your immediate family.
My interest is in the inner pursuit. The one that takes place behind closed doors, in the quiet of your mind.
Between you and yourself, are you changing your worldview to match others? Are you sacrificing your beliefs to impress others? Are you forcing yourself to accept ideas you don’t necessarily agree with, in fear of seeming outdated/ignorant, or what be it?
Are your beliefs actually outdated and arbitrary? Who decides?
The world will continue to tell you what and how you should think. Rarely how right you are but mostly how disturbingly wrong you are.
It’s part of the territory; what comes with being exposed to masses of opinions and worldviews. But none of it matters. What matters is who you are and what you believe in when there’s no one around to ridicule or even applaud you.
The relationship you have with yourself and your identity is precious.
“Knowledge of the self is the mother of all knowledge. So it is incumbent on me to know myself, to know it completely.” — Khalil Gibran
We exist within our own personal realities. The bubbles we have by default surrounded ourselves with. In our bubbles, we keep what we’ve collected from experiences and truths. A museum of identity artefacts we’ve accumulated from childhood up to this moment that we should, for the most part, be proud of.
That being said, as children, a big part of our identity was already present in us. We have simply grown into ourselves and at some point coloured the blueprint of who we are, at the core.
“Identity cannot be found or fabricated but emerges from within when one has the courage to let go.”- Doug Cooper
Your personal reality and ideas of morality are a precious lens through which you view this world.
Your identity manifests itself in every part of your life. With it, comes your purpose. You shouldn’t allow for your identity to be tainted, distorted and diluted so easily like it means nothing.
You are the master of your personal truth, and you get to decide, with true and genuine conviction, which parts of you you want to keep or discard. Which beliefs are yours to stay and which are free to escape you?
You don’t have to convert to any ideology overnight or forget your deep-rooted or even recent beliefs, even if, at times, you can’t defend them. Sometimes we may not have the right words to defend our beliefs if confronted. But your beliefs are not something you must walk around proving to people; what matters is how your heart feels when you hold onto them. Your truth exists in your inner world, where people’s opinions don’t really matter.
At the end of the day, if you want to gauge your identity relative to the society and world you inhabit, to come to a conclusion about whether you are a sane or tragically disturbed human, you can run a simple test. Ultimately, it all boils down to one thing: Am I a good human? Are my beliefs standing in my way of becoming one? What do I gain from changing my worldview overnight besides gaining approval from people?
These are questions we must ask ourselves when we feel pressured or changed in some way. Or simply to recalibrate ourselves and return to who we are.
It’s okay to change but equally okay to stay as we are. To keep the values that mean the world to us.
“It is always our own self that we find at the end of the journey. The sooner we face that self, the better.” — Ella Maillart
