Thinking about Identity
Many people around me talk about the importance of “identity”.
I wonder: how would you – yes, you, the reader of this post – define identity?
Photo © by Claudia Henzler as seen at Landestheater Salzburg during the Salzburg Festival 2014.
Whenever I´d like to define “who am I” or what my personal identity is made of, I can´t come to en end as this feels as if I´d be put into a box that´s to small for me. Yes, I am a woman. Yes, I am German. Yes, I am a photographer. Yes, I am an artist. Yes, I am a wife. Yes, I am a sister. Yes, I am a traveller. Yes, I am a friend etc… I am all of that, in relation to some and I am other things than that in other contexts….
Am I loving? Yes… but not always. Am I brave? Yes, but certainly not always. Am I grateful? Yes, but not always etc. …
I can say “I am a human being” that is striving to understand more about myself and the world I live in. And I can say many more things about myself. But it seems naive, if I want to formulate a final conclusion about “the make-up of my identity”… I do think our identity is something that is always subject to change (except maybe the soul, but even with that I am not 100% sure), as everything is always changeing (if we want it or not)…
Well, I wonder where the continuous public discussion about “identity” leads us to? If we say “oh, I am a Christian, he is a Jew, this guy is an Atheist”… and if we´d conclude from that statement, that this is our “identity”, than I wonder, if that thinking in “boxes” might lead us into the temptation of thinking “oh, I belong to this group, and this is the “only right” group (because I certainly want to belong to the “right guys” and not to those that are the (labeled) “wrong” ones) … What if somehow from this thinking in boxes a kind of “rassist” world view takes over where I always have to prove “I am right… so all those that are different from me must be the wrong/inferior ones (as I don´t want to be the loser/the inferior/the ashamed etc…)”? Isn´t that a strange worldview? However, isn´t that how the world around us conditions ourselves to think and behave accordingly and thus influences our/my thinking & behaviour in certain ways?!?!
I want to live in a world, where we relate to each other, because we are all human beings, not because we seemingly fit the same clishé or into “the same box” (that´s apparantly almost always to small to really fully fit in). … I guess I need to write more about this in my mothertongue German and I might reflect more about this via text, photography and art more publicly in the future… In case I didn´t express myself very clear, I do apologize, probably it´s because of my lack of expressing myself abundantly in philosophical matters in English. Anyhow:
WHAT COMES UP IN YOUR MIND… when you are asked about IDENTITY or let me put it differently:
how would YOU answer the question “who are you”?
I encourage you, to post your answers here – as I think many more would be interested to get to know your thoughts! Otherwhise send me a personal note about your thoughts. Thanks 🙂
CLAUDIA HENZLER
photography | art | communication
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so nice..