Identity Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 1

Identity - Essay Example Therefore, our identity is then defined by how we think we fit in to the world around us, and how we feel we stand out (positively/ negatively). Our culture, beliefs and they way our parents have provided us upbringing shapes our thoughts and perception of the situation and hence the world around us. We are a part of the culture that is followed in a country to which we belong, the language we speak the religion we follow the beliefs we acquire through ancestry. This together culminates to a civilization, our ethnicity and no culture can influence it. The way we are presented in the society ascertain and formulate our identity. Our behavior, our communication skills become our tools that enable us to survive and prosper. Our customs and traditions which we follow define our integrity and values we have in our lives. They are the aids of social interaction and do provide an individual a distinctive identity. Therefore identity is personal, social and ethnic and the personality that is shaped out of this is an amalgamation of all these convictions. Thus, establishing one's identity can be both a liberating and an oppressive occurrence as separation from any one of these parameters directly influences the identity and personality of the individual. For e.g. 1. Children who have been separated from their family or country of origin due to migration may become perplexed about their personal and social identities. They experience a number of moves, been cared for by different people in different places, lost important contacts and relationships from their past, been separated from family, friends and their ethnic and cultural networks. 2. Adopted child has some different personality especially those who are from diverse cultural backgrounds or have some kind of disability. Feeling or being made to feel different is a major issue for children who have been adopted. For the adopted child, the stigma of not living with their birth family, living as a cultural or ethnic minority and becoming accustomed to what it means to be adopted are lifelong adjustments. 3. Similar kind of stigma is felt by the children of the prisoners and those who commit punishable offence. Parent's deed affects the individuality of the child and provides a social aloofness, this make the child unique and shapes the personality of a child in a different perspective. The child may start hating the family/ society or parents or cultivate some kind of criminal psyche within the premature mind. 4. Children of the broken marriage also face identity crisis and are confused. They feel ashamed to talk about the disputes their parents have undergone resulting in unsuccessful marriage. It inculcates the seeds of insecurity in the child's mind and changes the psychology of the child. The child does not gain trust on any one and any kind of relationship throughout the life. This is the way personality is changed and shaped. 5. Parents undergoing the phase of mourning after divorce establishes a new sense of self and hence a new sense of identity. It is established that in a long-term marriage, each individual's sense of self-identity becomes tied to the other person and indeed to the marriage itself. Following a broken marriage, each person must reach back into his or her early experience and find other images and