Everyone in the world is different. They’re different from the way they look, their beliefs, their worldview, and more. All of these different attributes make up your identity. Everyone has a different identity, but what is someone’s identity and what does identity mean?
The definition of identity is “the fact of being who or what a person or thing is”. For me, I would say that identity is the qualities and attributes that make someone who they are. These attributes could be hobbies, beliefs, height, age, nationality and more. Identity makes you unique and different from others. It separates you from others around you. Your identity doesn’t need to be something that you show off to everyone. Sometimes, parts of your identity can be more public, and some parts can be more private to yourself.
What does identity look like? In class, we did many different activities that taught us more about human identity. One of these projects was to create a bio-poem about our identity. This includes your beliefs, friends, hobbies, family, and more. This assignment made me realize that identity isn’t just a small part of you. Identity is made up of so many different things, that nobody has the exact same identity as you and that’s what makes you unique.
Another activity we did that taught me about identity was the “My Name” story by Sandra Cisneros. In this story, there is a young girl named Esperanza. She talks about her name and the meaning it has in other languages. This story is so powerful because it shows the reader how important identity is. Your name is part of your identity and its a big part of it. Your name is the first thing you say to new people your meeting for the first time. The story of Esperanza is about how her name doesn’t fit who she is. It fits with her heritage and grandma who “looked out the window her whole life”. She doesn’t want that to happen to herself. For me, my name “Angelo” means angel. My name shows off my Italian heritage and given to me after my grandfather who also shares the same name.
Below is an animated gif that I created using a keynote. This gif was made to give you a little insight into my identity. I show the saxophone and music notes to symbolize my love for music and being a musician. I show python which is a coding language and git hub which is a code hosting service that symbolizes my love for coding. I also show a controller and two of my favourite games to show that I love to play video games. Just by looking at the image of me and the symbols in the gif, you start to get an image of who I am, and what I like. You know that I like to play music, code, and play video games. The part of my identity here is the different hobbies I like to do outside of school.
In conclusion, the term identity is really what makes you who you are. Identity is what makes you a responsible person. What makes you a quiet person. What you believe in and how you view the world. As you change, your identity changes with you. Identity is something as life goes on, will forever develop, change, and grow. Some parts of your identity may stay the same, but as you get older things may start to change and you may be a completely different person from who you were from when you were younger.
