Most people have a number of things they identify as. Things like gender, occupation, race, class, nationality, political affiliation, etc. What are the top 3 things you identify as, and is it in the proper order? My list is as follows:
Member of my family (ie. son, brother)
Black (African-American) person
American
I having started on my career or family (my own) yet, so I don’t really identify in those areas. I feel pretty comfortable with my list. However, I feel as though being black shouldn’t be as integral to my life as it is, but I feel like it has to be because it factors into others people’s perceptions so highly. Do you see a problem with that order, and if so, why?
Also, what would your top 3 or top 5 things be, and are you comfortable with them being in that order?
Hmmmmm
Human
Male
Family member (son, brother, uncle)
Proponent of science (idealogy, I guess)
individual in the developed world, and the 21st century (surroundings, I guess)
I have no idea what order they go in though, that order is probably close so I assume
Teacher
Smart person
Adult
Woman
White
So I guess that goes:
Occupation
Intelligence level
Age (wrapped up in autonomy level for me)
Sex
Race
I don’t know what is objectively “wrong’” or “right”, I just know that this is the priority combination that seems to work best for me, and keeps me happier than any other set of priorities I have had.
I think my answer makes good sense to me, so in that respect it is right and my priorities are in order. I believe that the infinitely small and the infinitely large are the same and so my identity ladder sort of forms a loop.
It begins at the heart of me where I am spirt – a child of God and part of all of Creation. At my heart I believe that I am One with all.
Then I focus on the essential me – an Earth Woman. Proud of my gender, my age, my memories. The lover of maple trees and cowboy boots and woodsmoke and Yeats.
Spousal Blend sounds a little like spicey blend – maybe for good reason. I wouldn’t quite be me without him. He expands me and I don’t always know where I leave off and he begins.
I’ve come to motherhood late in life. I got to be a grandmother first. They are my husband’s grandchildren. Now their mother, my step-daughter, has said that she is willing to take me on and make me her legal mother. Me. Mother. Mom. Me!
“Otherling” represents all of the other roles I’ve played and the things I’ve yet to be. It stretches out behind me, before me to students, friends, kin – even people I love just from reading about them. Sometimes I just love their spirits or I love them because they too are particles of the cosmos and that brings me back to where I started.
It’s 4:00 a.m. and I haven’t slept. If this reads to you like “purple prose,” so be it. And if it doesn’t make sense, that’s okay too. But it’s not incoherent to me and I’ve thought about it for a long time.
You know, I’ve given this some thought, and I have to say, I don’t feel a need to order my various identities because they’re not in conflict with each other, and they all contribute to the totality of my personality.