Who Are You?

The belief that a person’s identity and individuality can persist over a lengthy duration of time despite undergoing a number of different changes and alterations can be explained in two different ways. On the one hand, it is the nature of identity that a person is the sum of his or her experiences. This assertion is not the same as stating that a person is his respective experiences; rather he or she is the sum, the grand total, which essentially aggregates and compiles those experiences to form a unique, synthesized being. The second way in which an individual’s persistence as a single entity is explicable is through realizing consciousness for what it is—more than just a mental and physical process, but ultimately a spiritual one. 

Most people can generally identify with the first explanation significantly more than the second one, for the simple fact that it is less ethereal or religious, and quite a bit more pragmatic. People are not the various experiences they go through; rather they are the total of those experiences. A suitable analogy is provided by thinking about all of the different clothes that an individual has worn throughout his or her lifetime. When one considers the different styles and types of clothes a person has worn from his or her childhood, adolescence, early adulthood, and mature adulthood, it is apparent that most people have worn nearly every variety of color and fashion type that was available during the time period of their existence. However, when you see that person in the declining years of his or her life, for instance, they are not going to be wearing the same clothes that they wore in their youth. Yet the experiences that they went through while wearing different varieties and styles of clothing will have inevitably shaped the way that they dress in their declining years, whether or not that manifests itself in a proclivity for wearing jewelry, or a certain designer name of shoes, or even a penchant for wearing shorts instead of long pants. Thus, all of those unique and individual experiences a person goes through are akin to different types of outfits a person wears, all of which merely influence the character (or the type of clothes someone is wearing on a specific day) of a person. There is, however, an innate character there that has been molded yet retains the synthesis of those experiences. That synthesis attributes to the persistence of individuality since the earliest experiences are not discarded yet and form a fundamental component of an individual.

The relationship between these two explanations for individuality, both that a person is the sum of his experiences and that there is a unique spiritual being inside of a person’s physical exterior, are intrinsically related when one considers the notion that the aforementioned innate character actually reflects or is that spiritual being. Prior to any physical experiences, when a person is firstborn, there is a soul imbued within his or her body that is unique. Regardless of how much empirical evidence is compiled regarding physical components of the intellect and the body, people are animated more than by electrodes and other human-discerned, scientific processes. Their spirits are what ultimately animate them, and are what persist throughout a person’s life to account for individuality. Spirits have proclivities and sensitivities all their own—which are no less influenced by external physical or emotional or mental processes as well—yet they account for a person’s fundamental sense of purpose, of desire, and of what pursuits they engage in and how such pursuits make them feel and perceive themselves. This basic fundamental component of a person—any person—is influenced and possibly mutates, but it never changes so drastically that it is completely unrelated to its initial spirit.

An excellent example of the propensity for drastic transformation and change in which individuality and identity persist is found within the book The Autobiography of Malcolm X. It would be difficult to find a person who went through more extreme or sudden shifts in experiences and areas of focus in his life - where much of his identity was wrapped in race. The famous militant’s regard for Caucasian women is indicative of these multi-fold transformations he went through. During his teenage and early adulthood years he considered them lofty, highly desirable creatures that were the ultimate status symbol (Haley 70). After he was imprisoned and embraced the Nation of Islam, he went on record as claiming that they were devils and could do absolutely nothing of any benefit to him. After he returned from his pilgrimage to Mecca he came to regard them simply as humans, and non-distinct from any other human.

Despite the circumstances that shaped his viewpoints during all of these phases, X’s core fundamental individuality and spirit remained consistent. He was always a leader and an activist—first of his criminal enterprises, then of the Nation, and later on of his own organizations. He was always outspoken and fiery in his demeanor and speech. And he was always charismatic and insightful in a way that was clearly his own and clearly innate to him. His fundamental self was influenced to move into different figurative directions and walks of life, yet the spirit that animated him, which was encased within his body, was altered by different events but remained the same.

Therefore, it is apparent that persistent individuality can be explained in two ways that are related to one another. The first is the fact that people are influenced by the sum of their experiences, which does not negate those earliest ones which help to form the core of their being. However, the core of their being is also attributable to their own unique spirit, which is also influenced by external events but which merely processes them and incorporates them into one’s spiritual expression and proclivities.  

Work Cited

Haley, Alex. The Autobiography of Malcolm X. New York: Ballantine Books. 1965. Print.