My class has been reading a contemporary classic this term called Monsieur Ibrahim and the Flowers of Coran. It’s a short story, merely 68 pages long, about a motherless boy named Momo who grows up with a drunk, career-wise unsuccessful father. At the age of 11, Momo steals money from his father’s piggy bank to pay prostitutes. While most of my peers initially felt this inappropriate, we delved into a conversation in class about the lack of a maternal figure in Momo’s life that fuels his desire for affection. This sparked the topic of our french essays: identities. How do our identities manifest? What fuels/pushes certain characteristics, while diminishing others?
In writing this essay, I was reminded of a post that I’d written over two years ago about personalities. I was reminded of the two sides of me: the side perceptible to everyone and the one that manifests internally or with a select group of people. I reread what I wrote in that post from two years ago. Next, I thought about who I am today, my identity, and how people perceive me. It’s very different. It’s not just Self 1 that has evolved; who I am on the inside, Self 2, no longer aligns with what I’d written two years ago. Here’s to an update on my identity.
Externally, I project reservation. I abandoned my outspokenness in exchange for a more demure persona. It’s inaccurate to say that I’ve lost my ability to speak my mind because I haven’t. I simply choose not to overtly disagree unless I feel an inexorable inability to suppress my opinions. As I wrote a few weeks ago, I’ve found power in agreeability, which I’ve decided to capitalize upon unless something tests my fundamental morale. Secondly, I never liked being known as a know-it-all, a name people sometimes doted me because I achieved reasonably high marks in my classes. High school, however, inherently changed my ability to know everything because there is geniunely always someone who is very familiar with every topic out there. While I may understand a bit about xyz, someone else in the room is bound to understand pqr better than me. I no longer speaker upon things I’m unfamiliar with. I like to avoid pretending to know something I don’t. Perhaps I’ve learned the hard way of pretending to understand something, only to be completely outsmarted by another person in the room who understands the nuances of the issue and 40% more knowledge to base their claims upon. When I get into these conversations, I simply say, “I’m not very familiar with this topic, but from what I know…”.
Internally, I’ve lost some of the boisterousness and loudness I had years before. It’s been replaced with something I value more, sarcasism and humor. Time has become the most precious thing in high school and as a result, I’ve budgetted my time in ways that have minimized opportunites to be loud, party, or listen to music. Perhaps I’ve only temporarily lost my energy and maybe it will return again at another point in my life.
I firmly believe that identities inevitably evolve overtime. Perhaps this explains why the line distinguishing who I am on the outside versus the inside is no longer as vivid. In french, the word séduire means to appeal to. My teacher asked the class quelle identité vous séduit? Which identity appeals to you? As of now, I don’t know. Will we ever know though, for if we could predict how our identities would eventually change, I can’t imagine what notion would justify the process of change. I believe the constant feeding of new possibilities in our identities, driven by media, TV characters, etc, fuel that change.
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