The Formation of Identity

Throughout my life, I've experienced difficulties with a sense of identity, particularly that of self-acceptance. Here’s how I currently understand this struggle.

Enduring, fundamental characteristics of everyone’s identity are visible early in life. Some of those characteristics are desirable and some less so. The luck of the draw determines which culture you are born into and consequently which of your characteristics are selected for. By selection, I mean that parents encourage and discourage qualities like a kind of conditioning. If not the parent, then the community. From their very first breath of air outside the womb, the child faces the prospect of themself being shaped by the will of others. 

The development of mental faculties provides the opportunity for the child to accept or rebel against those who encourage and discourage their parts. In a group there is always the invisible pull to conformity. When fully bought into it, the child understands that they must not reveal who they are. They learn to be the ideal of the group because their survival depends on acceptance. The inflection point is when the child becomes independent. When the person gains the ability to sustain themself, they are no longer beholden to the demands and expectations of the group. When you can meet your own needs, you attain complete freedom to express your whole self. This is the task for the adult.

The stakes are existential. Every day that a person engages in self-deception their being is challenged. And, like a leaky boat, their self will soon sink to the bottom of a resentful ocean. But this can be overcome.

We understand who we are earlier than we think. Soon after birth, others understand our nature. Soon after self-consciousness, we understand our nature. But both others and ourselves prefer safety over risk. In practicality, risk aversion looks like a joyless vocation, a persistent feeling of dissatisfaction, restlessness, dread, depression, and any otherwise complacent behavior. Risk tolerance, on the other hand, looks like resilience: smiling despite unpleasantness, a joyful vocation, but not without its own challenges.

This aversion, which is learned early, ultimately hinders our ability to truly care for other people. What is valued most if not the care of and for others? The thought that I might risk my own life, or even minor goods like reputation, for another in need of my help, brings me face-to-face with the "core" of my identity. The reason it makes one shudder is, precisely, that they haven’t been face-to-face with themself often, if ever. Because they have been playing the part of an ideal group member for so long, their self appears foreign. Once self-deception has been habituated and the actor-self internalized, there begins a battle between the inner-child and the actor-self, which can last for a lifetime. 

At any given moment, one can confront their inner-child. They are only to be asked what their “calling” is: what, given the freedom of imagination, they wish to do. Then the anxious state of ambivalence will wash over them like a cold shower. Our dreams are so readily accessible, yet so in contradiction with the way we have lived, that we are unnervingly surprised when an answer springs to mind. 

The natural reaction to this experience of dissonance, of disconnect, is doubt and denial. It simply could not be true that this is my calling, otherwise I would have pursued it, would I have not? Not so fast. Too much is lost in retrospection. We forget the first sting of disapproval when we proudly stated our dreams as a child. We forget the first time we provided a replacement dream as our actor-self and cried into our pillow that night. We forget because it's too painful to remember. I will say that I didn't experience this myself, I found my parents to be wonderfully supportive, but the metaphorical point remains both interesting and plausible. 

I think this explanation is only bleak only in interpretation. Optimistically, the child in this world is given the gift of self-determination, yet it is achieved necessarily through struggle. One’s attitude during their struggle need not be one of misfortune, victimhood, and self-pity, or despair. On the contrary, the inevitable frustration to be experienced in pursuit and defense of their "core" identity is something to be grateful for and pleased with. For we are not formed by avoidance of the storm, but by weathering it.