Who are you?
Thursday, September 07, 2006
Who are you?
As an American Studies major I get to take a lot of impressive classes that have impressive ideas and impressive conversations about our lives in America as Americans. At the beginning of almost every class of this semester, before discussing American history/humanities/experience/literature, we discussed the American Identity - What are the characteristics identify our heritage?
To fuel the conversation we first talked about what things we identify with on an individual level. When asked "who are you?" the first response inevitably is your name. INTERESTING! One thing in this world that you are given from the beginning and yet have no control over is your most identifying feature. Then the list continues with various aspects including height, weight, talents, hobbies, religion, education, etc. All of us with varied identities are subject to the same sort of rules. How we see our selves has multiple aspects, develops over time, changes over time, and is constantly renegotiated and therefore totally unstable.
So, in case you are wondering: I am Angela. A tall, mormon woman from Texas, who is a student at Brigham Young University, the wife of Micah, and a blogger who played volleyball at one time in her life. Daughter. Sister. Aunt. American. Some things will change, others never will, but the choices I make today will shape tomorrow's future.
So, I ask again:
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4 comments:
How can you think of yourself as a woman when I still think of you as my baby? Some things never change!
I'm often plagued by your question, maybe because the answer keeps changing. Maybe there's two answers: the eternal, spiritual you and the externally-defined you. How close or far apart are those two people?
I learned at BYU that we are prisoners of our experience. I didn't believe it for years, but now I know it is true unless we break out.
Interesting topic to think about.
Thanks!
I've been trying to figure out who I am for quite some time now. It sounds like you have a much better grasp on who you are than I ever will.
But I can say this:
I am Elizabeth (NOT Liz, except to my family), an overweight 30 year old Mormon woman from Washington. Wife of Scott and mother to Rachel, Tyler and Rebecca. I'm a traditional housewife who cans, makes jam, bakes cookies, and hates to clean. Mother, wife, sister, daughter, aunt, sister and daughter-in-law.
But I have to think there's more to me than that, I just haven't figured out who that is quite yet. But thanks to you I will definitely be thinking much more about it.
LOVE YOU!!
That's my wife!
I am a creative genius whose talents are stifled by 5 children and 3 bathrooms that need cleaning. I am an organizer who lives with people that shun any organization. I am a thinker who is too tired to think of anything more important than I forgot to buy milk today.
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