Identity

On Saturday, Alex and I traveled to Anloga for the internet. Since we now have to make a trip every time we want internet access, it gives us an opportunity to reflect on things and participate in some good discussions. This particular instance, we were talking about identity, how it is created, how it is sustained, and how we, as people, create ourselves.

The realization is that here, or in any unfamiliar place, one must re-negotiate their identity. How well they do this, will determine the quality of their experience and their perception of their travels. What people naturally do is define themselves by things, materialistic, substance lacking, things. For example, I love coffee, I enjoy going Starbucks to read my book and enjoy my tasty iced beverage. I love going to the gym, working out, exercising. I eat certain foods at certain times of the day. I like to dress a certain way, keep my home looking a certain way, listen to specific artists. The list goes on.

What happens when you place yourself in completely unfamiliar, not previously experienced, surroundings? All of these prior sources of identity, familiarity and comfort are stripped from us until we are nothing but our pure un-contaminated selves. We have nothing to fall back on, no point of reference. I cannot meet someone new and tell them my favorite Starbucks beverage and have them understand. Starbucks? What is that? I cannot talk to someone, and tell them in my conversation that I love going to the gym. The gym? The gym does not exist here.

I also cannot hold on to my previously understood expectations. I cannot expect that anything comprising ‘life’ here, in a new community, location, country, system of beliefs and norms, will be anything like the individual parts that comprise ‘life’ for me in the United States. If I were to hold on to my old expectations I would encounter nothing but disappointment and frustration. My time would be ruined, because I would not be able to let go of everything I thought I was, and discover just who I really am without those materialist things.

You like buses to run on a time schedule? You like to eat yogurt for breakfast? You like people to work on deadlines, and get things to you on time? You expect that A causes B, B causes C and D will proceed E? Wrong. F follows K, Z comes before A, nothing is the same. As soon as you let everything go and understand this, you will become completely comfortable, satisfied, and fulfilled with the life around you.

What happens when you are able to let yourself go, completely open yourself up to an entirely different way of life and way of being… existing… is a complete influx of knowledge and shift in perceptions. Your mind will be opened and you will begin to make connections, find similarities, with what you once knew, and what you now understand.

You will make discoveries that hit the root of pure human nature. You will begin to see how different surroundings have the power to mold us humans into different actions. You will see how different surroundings make possible the formulation of different materialistic things, with different inbred meanings, depending on their context. And then you will see, we are really all the same.

Everyone, everywhere, struggles. Everyone everywhere, needs to eat. Universal truths. My own struggle is not any different than anybody else’s. But, my own struggle will be worse if I lead myself to believe that I am alone in it.

So what must we do? We must let ourselves go. We must understand that when we define ourselves with material we are insulting who we really are beneath it.

The faster I let my own ‘material’ go, and let myself understand another cultures ‘material,’ the faster I will understand the meanings that underlie this material. I will then be able to assimilate, relate, and be at peace.