Identity: Original

IDENTITY: WHO AM I

          All throughout life, we are asked the same questions over and over, “Who am I?” Sometimes we are able to figure out who we are, the person that we want to be, and are content with that person. Unfortunately, life isn’t always that easy and our identity is always being challenged.  There are obstacles we all face on the journey to figuring out are own personal identity.  We re-invent ourselves over and over trying to overcome those obstacles, always changing, always altering who we are.  One of the largest obstacles one faces on this journey is the need to impress others, whether it is our peers, our parents and teachers, or even oneself.

          As early as pre-school, our identities begin to be challenged.  We worry about if we are good enough to impress the little girl next to us; we worry if she will like us enough to share her Barbie’s with us.  Gloria Anzaldua says in her essay How to Tame a Wild Tongue, “In childhood we are told that our language is wrong.  Repeated attacks on our native tongue diminish our sense of self” (81).  In this instance, Gloria is talking about her native tongue of Spanish.  Younger kids that speak differently than how most children speak are made fun of and mocked for speaking another language.  Usually it is because the young mocker doesn’t understand, making it sound “funny”.  Not only are the words we use a type of tongue but there is also the way we talk, like having a lisp or a stutter.  After being teased over and over for all of these, a child who used to love to talk and be outspoken, may become quiet and reserved for fear of receiving more ridicule for the way they speak.  They completely change from the child they were becoming to a child who is more reserved and quiet, just to get away from the mocking of others. 

          The older we get, the more severe the challenge becomes.  In junior high and high school, we begin to adapt a different identity all together, just to be accepted by the popular crowd.   In Emily Whites essay High School’s Secret Life she says, “They all imitate one another because the imitation speaks of their power.  In this context conformity is not a cop-out but a way of broadcasting the fact that your aren’t a weirdo, that you are speaking in the signs of the chosen ones” (18).  We change who we are so that the “cool” kids will acknowledge us, talk to us; bring us into their special society so that we belong to that society, no longer being the outcasts.  Our true identity is forgotten and replaced by a fake identity that isn’t ours at all. 

          Another obstacle that many face in developing their own identity is the need to impress their authority figures, like their parents or teachers.  Young children look up to their parents as knowing everything and they want to do everything they can to make them proud of them.  As these children age, the fight for who they are and what their parents want them to be becomes harder and harder to fight.  In the essay The Overachievers, Alexandra Robbins states “Never mind if the students don’t care about the prestige levels of their post-high school tracks; never mind if college is not for them.  Sometimes from as early as their toddler years, millions of students are raised to believe that there is nothing more then important success, and nothing that reflects that success more than admittance to a top-tier college”(250-51).  They get this idea in their head that if you do not go to college, you won’t amount to anything important.  This will make a student, who wants to be an amazing writer, force herself to go to school and become a doctor, because her parents think it is the better and more successful choice.  They become someone they wouldn’t choose for themselves, just to fit the mold for success their parents and teachers have set up.  They sacrifice their dreams, their desires, and their own self identity for someone else’s dreams and desires.

          With so many obstacles always challenging you to be someone you are not, your own self can be an obstacle in the unfolding of one’s own identity.  Discovering who you are and not letting your fears and influences change that is an internal battle that we all struggle with as years go by.  During Halloween one year, Lucy Grealy, author of the essay Masks, talked about when she wore a Halloween mask to hide her scar on her face. "I breathed in the plastic tainted air behind the mask and thought that I was breathing in normalcy, that this freedom and ease were what the world consisted of, that other people felt it all the time"(71).  Her desire to feel normal kept her wearing a mask of what she really was.  She hid from the world what she really looked like, because she didn’t feel normal on the outside.  Even though on the inside she had the same fears, same thoughts, same everyday likes and dislikes as everyone else, her outside appearance hindered her from bringing out what her true identity inside was.

          We all are in charge of figuring out who we are, what our true identity is.  From the time we are just young children, to teenagers, to full fledged adults, we are always changing what that identity is, trying to fulfill the outside worlds perception and ideas of who we should be.