Identity

The Oxford dictionary defines identity as the fact of being who or what a person or thing is. “He knows the identity of the bombers”, is the example provided, but it is so much more than that. Depending on who you asked their definition and example would vary somewhat massively.

If you were to ask a follow of the arts, they’d probably give you their interpretations of every book, painting or sculpture every created. Their favourite artist who inspires them most. Picasso? They’d treat you to every spot of information they can ooze from their heads about the great man. They’d do so because they see his creations and life as what inspired them to become the person they are today. Their example could be “Van Gogh uses his expresses his identity through his abstract use of colour”.

Ask a lawmaker or a law enforcer and they come out with why they decided to follow the stiff arm of the written law. Why they see their career as one for the greater good and in the aid of justice. You find people of that nature to wear it as close to their heart as possible, making it who they are not just what they do.

Propose the question to a happily single man in his early twenties and he divulges his results from his most recent nights out, with his favourite chat up line of the current season. He’d probably give the asker a syllabus of his all-time top five. But he most likely couldn’t give you any names of those he’s loved. But that’s alright because that’s not who he is then and there. His identity and lifestyle can’t quite fathom a deeper bond.

Ask a literate and they’ll drop you with some Shakespeare, “To thine own self be true, and it must follow, as the night the day”. That doesn’t mean he identifies as the long dead William nor the night and day, but that they use his work to improve themselves and to mould the person they have become. Possessing the memory of the legends and their work to create a branch of who they are.

A married fathers answers would revolve around those closes to him. His affection for those he cherishes and the love he receives in return, make him the man he is today. How he looks at his partner and feels completely vulnerable. Knowing that one person can level him with a single glance or word, possessing the ability to rescue him from the depths of hell if needed. Ask that man what his identity is, and he simply says protector and lover.

Place the question before a widow and she will talk of her loss and how it broke her down to the smallest pieces of will and atoms, but then gave her the will to rebuild and carry on. How the person she is solely down to her past and loss.

Ask a person who was orphaned from a young age and had to watch helplessly as their life fell apart around them, and their identity would be further than mine than I could fathom. I wouldn’t know for the first second what a single second what they have had to deal with and how it left them scarred. A person’s identity is defined as who they are, but in reality, its why they are. What moulded and inspired them to be the man, woman or child that stand in front of you.