Identity

Someone said, "you don't find who you are, you create it."

Which means that our identity is not merely a mark that was gifted to us at birth or a single characteristic that we might stumble upon one day. It is an accumulation of all the choices we've made and all the experiences we've had. It is made up of everything we are including our culture, our spirituality and our political ideologies.

So many of us make the mistake of rooting our identity in one spot, mislead by the idea that you can only be one thing. But identity is fluid, it moves when we move, it grows when we grow and it changes when we change. As we work our way up in this world, we are constantly building on this identity, shifting and adjusting to make room for new things we have learnt, new places we have seen and connected with, and new people we have come to love.

Identity cannot simply be a political affiliation, religion, gender or culture for these are not enough to build a whole life on. They are merely building blocks to the person you are going to become, the one you are creating now everyday of your life.

Personally, I'd like to think that my identity is a spirit. It is constantly moving and changing as i grow. It does not stifle or force me to make choices but it builds on the consequences of my choices, negative or positive. I would also like to imagine that it is an incomplete drawing or piece of art that gains more colour becomes clearer with each step i take in life.

Identity is a beautiful thing in the sense that, we cannot say we have fully become it. As long as we are alive our identity will keep changing and growing. And yet, at the same time, we cannot feel incomplete or in lack of it because it has fully incorporated every experience we've had and everything we are.

A freeing thought, if ever there was one, is that if my identity is who i am, then i am yet to become who i am.