The common fact of human nature is that everyone is unique. How we behave and react to different situations becomes our identity and often dictates where we belong. However, it is not to say that discovering this identity of ours is easy. In fact, it is often the hardest challenge in our lives.
The rapid development of technology has seen the ‘booming’ of social media. There are now countless ‘apps’ and sites to allow people to connect, regardless of whether you are best friends or strangers. What one might not realise is how powerful these social sites can be. The freedom to, literally, become whoever you want to be allows us to almost take control of our lives. However, in reality, all we are doing is creating a fake sense of security and belonging because eventually ‘Facebook friends’ will have to meet in person and how many ‘likes’ you get on your profile picture won’t mean a thing. In real life we don’t always get to choose who we are influenced by and often our identity is dictated by our lives. Discovering our true self is therefore almost impossible.
Here is a little insight to my own experience. At the age of 14 I migrated to Australia from Malaysia and found myself thrust into a foreign world and foreign culture. I soon realised that what I knew about myself no longer existed because I could not retain my original identity when all I wanted to do was to fit in. For the whole year, I spent my time engaging in conversation about Australian Football teams and saying ‘arvo’ instead of ‘afternoon’. Yet a lingering feeling inside of me resented this new ‘me’, and so I found myself unable to belong in this new country. Eventually I developed a new identity but that took years and the sacrifice of many aspects of my life.
To some extent, I can relate to Sandra Laing’s experience in the film ‘‘Skin’’. Born of white descent yet appeared black, Sandra quickly learnt the importance of identity. The film revolved around Sandra’s journey in discovering herself which saw her being exiled from her family and the loss of a husband. She was stuck between the white and black community of South Africa, but never truly belonged to one. The apartheid only made her decisions even more harder as she juggled between a black and a white identity. The conflict between my identity as a Malaysian and an Australian resembled Sandra’s dilemma, although not as extreme. For me, it was more about preserving aspects of my identity that I have come to like and cherish.
Well then, if the journey to discovering ourselves and where we belong is so painstakingly hard, why even bother? A man named Richard R. Grant once said ‘‘The value of identity of course is that with it comes purpose.’’ This idea is portrayed in Ray Lawler’s ‘‘Summer of the Seventeenth Doll’’. After Roo lost his position of leader of the gang, he found himself lacking purpose and identity and therefore leaving them and going off to waste all his money drinking. My father always sees himself as the sole supporter of our household. Ever since he retired to do old age, however, he found himself roaming aimlessly around the house every day. Even now, he still finds himself missing his working days. When we become so attached to a certain identity only to lose it suddenly, we find it even harder to discover our true selves and where we may belong.
Our identity is largely affects by our peers and experiences; it is not something we can control. The fact that people around us can so easily derail our knowledge of ourselves is why we often struggle to discover who we really are and hence where we belong