My Identity Essay On Who I Am

Identity is what makes a person who they are. It is a complex relationship between a person’s personality and their appearance. Personality can be broken down by how that person acts or feels. This aspect of identity can be impacted by mental health and disabilities. The appearance of a person can also be broken down by how a person looks and how they dress. Physical appearance can be impacted by genetics and outside influences; accidents, diseases, sickness, etc. With the combination of the two we have the third influence on a person’s identity, personal choice.

What truly makes up someone’s identity? “The characteristics determining who or what a person or thing is.” This definition is outdated. A person’s characteristics are not the only thing that defines them. Events in someone’s life affect who they are as a person more than their characteristics do. Identity is how life experiences shape a person and how they view themselves.

I am truly proud of my background and how it has formed my identity. My background consists of me being Portuguese. I could not be any more thankful for how greatly my background has impacted my life into what it is now. It has helped me gain many friends that I am still very close to and gain interests that have started since I was a child. Simply experiencing my family’s numerous customs and traditions is why I love to express that I am Portuguese. It has given me the opportunity to visit Portugal every year during each summer where I fall in love with the country each time. Being Portuguese has taught me many lessons throughout life that I will continue to pass on for future generations of my family.

If we really don’t know how to define ourselves well, then it reaches some point that we feel we don’t have a purpose in life. Finding out who we really are just takes time and thinking about our importance in life. My identity or how I define myself is something that requires elaboration. Generally, I can define myself in terms of religion, education, gender, political, beliefs, sexuality, physical or learning challenges. In terms of religion, I can say am Muslim who believes the God. My level of education is up to college level, a place where I am until today, politically, I am not affiliated to any party, but I believe in service delivery, and therefore, for me to vote in a leader for a political seat will fully depend on his / her leadership

In the process of determining who I am, I discovered there are few components I consider key to my identity. Elements such as sexuality, gender, and ethnicity are less important to me as my idea of self could be applied to many combinations of the aforementioned. Instead, I have come to recognize that the components key to my identity have less to do with the physical traits I was born with and more so to do with the values I possess and my own cognition. My capabilities, upbringing, faith, and culture are core to how I define myself and are, in my opinion, the key components of my identity. Who I am as a person has also changed over time and a variety of influences have had an impact on my development. The way I see it, my identity is an ever-changing construct of interconnected components, each with their own unique or shared influences.

Identity is one of the most important things about a person's character that no one could ever strip from them. Everyone has their qualities and characteristics that make up them and create unique personality. These qualities within a person are so important that without them they would not be themselves. I would feel like my application would be empty without explaining my back story about the time that I was adopted. This background is essential to me and how i live my life.

Sunday mornings my mother in the kitchen singing in Spanish cooking breakfast for everyone afterward we would head to church, a Latino congregation. My parents would be talking in Spanish, I would always understand what they were saying when they would talk with me speaking English or Spanish interchangeably back to them. It never occurred to me that other kids’ parents do not speak another language because I was so used to both. As I grew up I was always called the gringa (white girl) of the family. From neighbors to classmates, co-workers, and people I interacted with in general did not think I was Latina because I have fair skin and naturally blonde hair but light brown eyes, my brother, and, father have green eyes and blonde hair too. It never really bothered me until I realized later as I grew up and started to navigate the world more on my own that I saw it as an issue. Being confronted by people who challenge me on my own identity has given me another identity in which I must defend and prove that the labels I put on myself are mine and I do not need to meet your requirements for you to accept that I am who I say I am.

My brother blew his hand up with a firework and lost 3 fingers. That experience changed his identity by making him a better person because he started to appreciate everything more.

Identity defines the fact of being who and what the person or thing is. It helps a person to distinguish or identify their characteristics and personality such as language, school, traditions, and culture. Normally, it is the assumption of a certain person that he or she use to do and believe. The purpose in discussing about identities may increase other people’s knowledge about who and what you are. It is a way to expressed and advocate people the things they misinterpret about your character and personality.

Being held to such high expectations by one's family can put a lot of pressure on an individual. For several years, both my parents and grandparents have worked immensely, to get their future children in the place that I am now: in a place with satisfactory education and opportunities. I hope that in the future with these opportunities, I will be able to be the first to go to college, and build my own career. My Mexican cultural background is very special to me, in the way that causes me to see things in a different perspective than others. It also empowers me because with it, comes many stereotypes and proving them wrong is something I am determined to do. I am still at a young age where I am still trying to figure my future out, and in order to do this, I must be able to figure out my identity and purpose. I am nothing but grateful that my family has been able to give me the opportunities and unique culture, because with this, I will be able to break many barriers within my family.

What is Identity? For most people, they would say that it is who you are. But, it means so much more. Identity is the experiences that will influence your life. Your identity is who you are and the decisions you make. Without identity, you wouldn’t be who you are today. Your identity can change in a matter of seconds, and there is no way to ensure one's outcome

Religion, education, being made in God’s image, circumstances of birth, freedom, fear, and care for others form my identity and the identities of those in the Old Testament. I, like the patriarchs, identify myself by these standards and uphold them even during a challenge because these markers establish who I am as a person and the fundamental principle of my being. By staying true to these markers, I represent my passions while not breaking under the pressure of society.

Throughout my life, I’ve struggled with my identity as an individual, and I still continue to question who I really am as a person. Although I can certainly tell people of my opinions and what I believe in, such as being a liberal and an individualist. I can never tell others of what I really am, personally. I do think that my past experiences and family background has affected how I identity as a person, and how I express myself towards others. In the past, and perhaps even now, I have been alone for most of the time and remained closed up within my home, never coming out of my shell, since I had the Internet and I could fulfill my enjoyment there. However, I later realized I still lack the sense of personal contact that I see with my peers and other people, even to this day. My family was also relatively small and without much connections with the people in their families, since they immigrated from the Philippines, so all I had for most of my life was the ones closest to me like my Mom, Dad, Sister, and my Grandparents, so that contributed to me being alone for most of my life. However, there was a key event that allowed me to regain confidence within myself and discover who I was as a person, and its effects continue to influence me to this day.

Every person has an identity that is unique to them. If I had to describe who I am to somebody that has never met me I would say that I am a queer nineteen-year old in recovery. This does not tell the person every part of myself. They could not know what my personality is like or how I was raised. However, they have a better more exact understanding of me than a stranger at a bus stop would have. The factors that formed my identity affect my daily life, my future, and how I act in different environments.

Diversity, to me, is still a new concept. For the first 18 years of my life, I lived in a small and extremely religious city in Utah called Provo. My parents first immigrated here in 1983 and have stayed here ever since to pursue financial opportunities. Growing up, I felt a lack of personal uniqueness. I found myself constantly latching on the group identity of others to better fit in. In my hometown, a solid 80% of the residents were religiously Mormon. Not only was I the only Chinese student within my entire neighborhood but I was also the only atheist as well. This absolutely created an inherent barrier between myself and my community. I never had an issue of integrating myself within social groups but it was subconsciously clear to me that my forced social identity would often trump my sense of uniqueness. It was not until I visited California for the first time where I began to appreciate my diversity and social identity. I believe as people; we often find ourselves insecure to fully embrace our unique quirks. However today, I make it priority to always embrace my uniqueness while improving myself based on my experiences of social identity groups.