Alexander Case
Carole Center
ENGLISH
9/23/2020
Finding your True Self
A person who is confident in themselves have found their true self. In this process it can be very challenging in many ways. A main challenge in finding your true identity is accepting where you come from as a person. Many people come from very different places in the world, and sometimes it is hard to accept that some people are born into a better situation than others. People do not choose how hard theirs parents have worked or what they have achieved in their life before you were brought in to be a part of it. Every part of the world that you grow up in you will face different challenges. When you are born you don’t choose your name. When you grow up and develop knowledge like understanding people may not like the name that they are given. Your name is one of the most important things in your life, it is what you are addressed by and one of the first things people will “judge” you on when you meet them. Religion could also be a challenge growing up. If you are growing up in a family with a religion that they have and the only one they know, you are not given much of a chance to choose what you really believe in. All these challenges effect every individual in society in their own way. Everywhere you go in society you are judged as a person. Society usually has an interpretation in their head of you based off your looks and people that you are with. If this judgmental challenge that many people face were to change, it would call for people to take out their egos and not “judge” or “identify” anyone by looks. The main challenge I see about finding your true identity would be being raised into a certain culture or religion.
Culture and Religion bring a great identity to who you are as a person. Finding your true self is a big part of your journey to where life will take you with your identity. An example in the Lin article when it says “My name links me with my family, with the island nations that are ever more distant from my life. (Although the links can be very general: I share my last name with 8 percent of Taiwanese people.) My mother’s maiden name, Nakamura, is my sisters’ and my middle name.” This quote shows that where you are born names are going to be very common and similar to one another. Finding your true self when you may be around someone who was raised just like you can be challenging to be your own person. In the Hennick article he quotes “It’s impossible right now to know what sort of impact race will have on Nile’s sense of identity, or how it will circumscribe his ability to move through the world as he pleases.” This quote also shows that growing up as a black young man some people will look down on you because the color of your skin. He talks about not knowing what sort of impact having black skin is like in the community around him. Having colored skin could make it a huge challenge for some people in finding their true self with people looking down on them for no reason. An example could be in today’s society with the Black lives matter movement. Equality is a big problem in the United States and people growing up in this situation is something they are trying to change.
People throughout our whole world struggle with finding their true self identity. Things that affect finding your true self would be inner motivations, self-expression, and self-definition. Finding inner motivations by finding your true self may be hard at times because you may think that listening to yourself at that point in time is not the best thing for you. Your inner self also is a reflection of your self-expression things that you may think in your head will relate to your life in the physical world. Self-expression is a variety of different things like feelings, thoughts or even ideas. Finding your identity is all about your feelings with yourself and thoughts that someone may have about you or even you have about yourself.
