‘Who Are You?’ The Never-Ending Journey Of Identity Development
You might think you’re one and the same person all your life. Think again — Your true identity only settles after your last breath.
‘Who are you?’ Instinctively you‘d probably answer that question stating your name, age, background, hobbies and job. Explaining who you truly are, is no topic for small talks. And there’s no shame in that. Your true identity is an inherently complex phenomenon. You are you — but how exactly is ‘you’ defined?
Imagine I rewound the tape of your life. Your trophies and certificates are pulled off the walls, unframed, and returned. Your children grow smaller, then vanish. You too become smaller. Your adult teeth retract, your baby teeth return, and your traits and eccentricities fade away. I keep rewinding still, until I’m halving and halving a colony of cells, finally arriving at that amazing singularity: the cell that will become you.
The question, of course, is what happens when we press ‘play’ again. Are your talents, traits, and insecurities so deeply embedded in your genes that they’re basically inevitable? Or could things go rather differently with just a few tiny nudges? In other words, we essentially originate from our genes, but how much of your fate do you allot to your genes, versus your experiences, versus chance?
