Category: Identity

Are You Proud Of Where You Are From?

People often have a complicated relationship with their own past. Which raises the question: Are you proud of where you are from?

There are many reasons why you might be proud of where you grew up, some personal and some others more general.

For the personal, you might note the place you learned to ride a bike, or had your first kiss, or made a particular friend. Or the place you are from might be notable for some other reason, like being a champion in a sport, or producing a famous person.

There are just as many reasons why you might be ashamed of where you are from, following the same general types. If something bad or traumatic happened to you as a child, you might easily associate that with where it took place. Or your home town might be famous for something negative, like drug use, or producing a serial killer.

Of course, it seems likely that where you come from produces in you both shame and pride in some combination. Just like people, places are complicated, with any number of both good and bad points. Does the good outweigh the bad, in your opinion? Or vice versa?

The last thing to consider is just how you define “from”. You can be “from” a house, a neighborhood, a town, a state, or a country. And you might well feel a mixture of pride and shame, in different proportions, over each one. It’s perfectly reasonable, for example, to feel pride in your country while still being ashamed of some of the things it has done.

Do you feel great pride or shame over where you originated? Why do you feel that way, and how has it changed as you’ve gotten older?

Related questions: Where are you from? What makes a place feel like home? What are you the most proud of?

 

How Does Your Identity Matter?

More than ever before, we have to prove we are who we claim we are. What is the importance of our identity?

Sometimes it seems that we’re constantly being asked to verify our identity.

That might take the form of using a password to access an app or a website. We have to provide documentation to get a drivers license, and then we use that license in dozens of different ways. You may have to supply the last four digits of your social security number to access your utility bill. You’d better remember your PIN if you want to withdraw money from the ATM!

It’s easy to see why — identity theft happens every day. Someone posing as you might open a credit card, or use an existing card to buy things a thousand miles from where you are. Emails supposedly from you are more likely to get your friends to click on a suspicious link.

And it can be complicated and inconvenient to remember or store hundreds of passwords, keep straight all the security questions about which street you grew up on or your childhood dog’s name, and be inputting codes from texts or emails using two-factor authentication.

With all this effort being made to verify your identity, have you given any thought to what that identity is? Is it just a collection of memories and experiences? Is it genetic, like a fingerprint or a DNA sample? Or perhaps it is what you believe or the actions you would take in any given circumstance?

What makes you uniquely you, and how can you demonstrate that to someone else? And how can you verify that same information for others?

Related questions: What makes you you? With which groups do you identify? What makes something a human right?