Hi all,
I have been thinking of something lately. If someone asked me who I am, what would I say? Other than the obvious demographic information of course. And I realized I do not have a good answer to that.
I tried to define myself without association to anyone or any job. Assume I am nobody’s daughter, sister, cousin, friend etc. Who am I without them? Assume I am not a PhD student or teaching assistant. Who am I without them? What are my individual characteristics?
The first characteristic that came to my mind is that I love people. I am the kind of person who become the happiest when there are people I love around and we can help lift each other up. Just when I decided this might be a major factor to define myself with, I realized it is not fully due to me. Everyone in my family is people-lovers, so how much of this characteristic if from my family? I don’t know.
Another thing that I thought of was that I like doing things. I like being active (although I possibly adore staying at home more). Then guess what? My mom is more even at her current age and our energies are similar. So that might not be uniquely be me either.
Whatever I thought of turned out to be shared with people around me. Then I thought: what makes me uniquely me? It is the unique mixture characteristics I collected from people around me. I am a mixture of all the people around me and experiences I have had. We all are. In that way, none of us is unique because we have similar traits but we are all unique because we all mix these traits in different ways and amounts.
What do you think? How would you define yourself? How much of you is influenced by people around you or your experiences? Can you say that any characteristic you have is uniquely available to you (namely, you didn’t get it from anyone around you?). Let’s chat.