Is identity important?

Conner Evans

9/10/14

English 1100-37

Professor Young

Is Identity Important?

            Our Identity is important because it’s based on who we are, who we've been, and who we think we will become. If you don’t know your identity then you don’t know who you really are or you don’t know the viewpoints of other things. It’s a person’s conception and expression of their own self. It can be individuality, group, national or cultural. Identity is a part of the soul of each person or group. If we lose sense of identity and if we aware about self-identity, we will live in this world without soul. It is like eating food without any taste. There will be no any inner pride or joy. Identity can be distinct characteristics, it can be a form of identification, a label or even an act someone does, someone’s signature something. Identity has its own psychological background, and has serious consequences if it’s lost.

            A single identity is what defines a person from the next guy. It allows us to characterize differences and behaviors to allow people to be unalike and make us into our own special significant being. An abundance of different characteristics go into creating ones identity. A characteristic is a feature or quality belonging typically to a person, place, or thing and serving to identify it. The way one should look at a single characteristic is that it is one little piece of the whole identity like apple is only one of the ingredient to an apple pie. However a person’s identity is not just all characteristics but is a main part of the very complex puzzle. Characteristics’ can be as simple as someone’s taste in food music clothing…etc. and as complex as culture and religious background. There really is an endless amount of characteristics and an even more endless amount of combinations of characteristics that make up a person’s identity.

            Another piece to the puzzle of a healthy identity is a strong signature something. What that means is it’s a broader object, place, or thing that can more easily define someone without getting into tremendous detail. It’s simply something that you can say defines you. For example playing a trumpet might be something that defines someone. From this you can get that said person is smart, intelligent, has a strong sense of rhythm, can stand alone, but when around other trumpets is a loud, powerful, union of sweet harmony. After reading Gloria Anzadua How to Tame a Wild Tongue I now know her signature something is her language. “I am my language. Until I take pride in my language, I cannot take pride in myself.” (pg7 line 36) Her language is who she is. It’s her culture, its how she expresses herself, and is how she communicates to others. The biggest thing about is her need to express herself and language identifies that. If language is who she is then being a writer is also who she is. Those two things go two and two and all she every really wanted to do is express herself. In a way it’s her way of rebellion in that expression in her culture as a women is frowned upon, but being a writing and using her language in the way she does is a backdoor entrance to herself but also allows her to embrace her culture. Gloria knows who she is and has a powerful identity that she can express through her signature something.

            What happens when you lose your identity? When we lose our sense of identity, it can be as serious as creating a mental illness, the most common being depression. Depression being intense sadness including feeling helpless, hopeless, and worthless this can last for many days to weeks and keep you from functioning normally. Usually to get out of something like that one would have to indoor therapy or medication. It’s not just depression someone may feel when they lose their identity, there are even more cases of more serious happenings. Many loss of identity lead a staggering amount of suicides. This is a fantastic reason why identity is so dam important cause any loss of life by one’s own hands is tragic and horrific. What happens is that once you lose your identity, people tend to think they really are worthless and words like “lost cause” start to turn up, and before you know it someone close to you an associate, a friend, even a family member is lost from this world. What really happens is that if no one has an identity we become a society of mindless zombies with no self-expression. In the Book Brave New World the setting is a world where everyone is the same and no one is different. A world were self-expression is the root of evil and that people only survive because they are programed to a job given to them at birth. IDENTITY is important because a world like a Brave New World is a world stuck in a rut and not worth living.

            Identity is a person’s conception and expression of their own self. It can be individuality, group, national or cultural. Identity is a part of the soul of each person or group.  Lose of identity is a tragedy do to how significant it is. Identity can be distinct characteristics, it can be a form of identification, a label or even an act someone does, someone’s signature something. Most of all Our Identity is important because it’s based on who we are, who we've been, and who we think we will become.