Ever since I opened my eyes, I have come across many people with strong identities (be it at home or at school) and eventually developed an acute fondness for such powerful characters. To my understanding, our identity is our essential self, the part of us that make us different from all other people. A strong sense of identity enables us to live full lives, to overcome crisis and to communicate well with others. It is the sum total of whom and what we believe ourselves to be. It includes not only physical and factual aspect like our appearance, profession, position in life but also our views and ideas on these matters. Identity is also what makes us unique, the difference between ourselves and every other person who exists. Our identity is vital to us. Under conditions of stress, isolation or deprivation we cling to our sense of identity in order to survive. Without a strong sense of identity we easily lose our self confidence and even some of the will to live. Identity crisis would mean identity lost everything lost.
From the moment that a baby discovers that he is not the entire universe, he begins trying to establish his own identity. His parents both contribute to this, giving him first a sense of what type of family he belongs to, a feeling of being accepted, of being capable of being loved and even of giving love in return. This sense of being loved must be very strongly instilled in the child for he has to tolerate many occasions when his parents deny him his wishes or may become angry with him.
As the child grows, his identity is strengthened and moulded by the reaction of others towards it and by the events in his life. Learning or failing to learn to get on with others at school, learning not only the facts taught him but also the moral precepts given by parents ,teachers and other adults all add to the nature of his growing identity. If these values form a largely consistent unit, the identity will be strong. If not, the self esteem of the child well often be low and the ideal self will be confused.
The adolescence makes new friends whose opinions become important, sometimes these opinions vary in an extreme fashion, shaking and testing the strength of the identity. The stability of identity is under attack, pulled by childhood influences in one direction and emergent childhood in the other. In other circumstances, however, things can go wrong.
When you come across people with different patterns of opinions, ideas, etc. It is hard to express your views and to agree with them on one matter or the other. You feel like there is some missing link and really difficult to establish the strong social contacts needed to develop a sound social identity. At the end, I feel like sticking to your standards…….
REFERENCE:
Gangoo.R.(2015).Who we are?.Greater Kashmir.retrieved on 24th February 2016 from
http://www.greaterkashmir.com/news/opinion/story/204849.html
