Past, present and future 10.02.
Reading up on the subject of ‘identity’ for my course led me to a few interesting quotes. I suppose, we tend to all think of ourselves as certain stable labels. I am British, i am female, i am mixed race. These are terms most people wouldn’t dispute if you present them with them, but actually all of these things are just as constructed as labels like loud, shy, creative, lazy etc. Our national, racial and gender identities arn’t natural, they are things we learn and which are taught to us.
Of course your identity changes throughout your life, none of think we are the same person we were 5, or even 1 year ago. But just how much your identity changes can shock you sometimes. Your idea of home, your idea of ethnicity, your very sense of self are all open to transformation. If we forget this we risk getting stuck in an identity label which doesnt fit who we are now, only who we were then.
I guess it would be fair to say that the last few months i’d been stuck in a hole, a hole in which i was identifying myself with an identity which has changed, is changing. I was finding it hard to let go of a past self, and accept that who I am now is different. Realising that who I was then, is not gone, but merely a past feature of my identity which shapes who I am now is important to me, because it lets me move on. I was that, i was there, now i am this and i am here. I can be both at once, and i can stop fighting this internal conflict which was never really there.
-J