Our Changing Identities
June 2009, age 28. The month I got excited about a garden. In my defence, it was my garden. The former gravel pit surrounded by blue concrete walls began its transformation into an urban oasis. To me growing up, caring about a garden was a symbol of the dullness that was the lives of the old and boring. It meant cardigans, classial music and copies of The Daily Telegraph. That was not somewhere I could see myself going. And then one fine day I caught myself thinking happy thoughts about a garden. I was dimly aware of an invisible line not so much crossed as trampled underfoot several miles back.
Until recently my peer group did most of the same things at the same times. School. University. Getting a job after graduation. Leaving home. But now that those highly structured years are behind us we’re free to go our own ways more than ever before. We’re all doing different things in different combinations and at different speeds. Careers. Relationships. Living arrangements. Planning for the future. Taking each day as it comes. In all respects, changing and adapting to others’ changes. We’re meeting new incarnations of each other; none of us is any longer the student we once were, or even the person we were last year.
The things that bring me enjoyment are changing and starting to include stuff that I and others might think painfully uncool. It’s a gradual evolution. I still like some things the high school, university, and early twenties versions of me liked, while others fall out of favour. Video games are largely forgotten but I like to think air guitar will be with me always.
So what’s the point? I see a tendency to regard identity as largely fixed, with any changes taking the person further away from their previous self. This can be threatening to the person concerned and those around them. If the person you first got to know is wholly or partially gone, it can feel like a betrayal. “Hey, you’re not the person I once knew! I liked that person!”. Entirely possible.
Part of the art of living is managing your relationships with yourself and others. Demand respect for who you are and who you become. Extend the same to others. We’re engaged in an ever-changing dance of identity, sometimes making subtle, measured gestures, sometimes busting out some serious moves, and all the time influenced by the others on the dancefloor. So get out there and throw some shapes.
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