On Identity Formation

I've been thinking a lot lately about how we become ourselves and why people do the things they do.

It seems like everyone wants to be famous, like everyone is a voyeurist. This has all become socially acceptable. Twitter, Facebook, and blogs are the windows we look through to spy on everyone else: friends, celebrities, strangers. We are a society of plagiarists, in my mind. Some of this plagiarism is completely accepted and even encouraged. We are becoming a society of copycats.

I have a problem with this.

Jamund and I often muse about "fans"—sometimes people become your fan and seem to blindly love all you do or say. Other times you are a fan—you just love someone and everything about them. And I think this fandom can be okay, as long as it doesn't lead to copying—or the fan expecting that the person they love so very much must necessarily love them back. Let's face it: why would you want to be friends with someone who is merely copying you—someone you have worked x amount of years to become? Why would you approve of someone who does all that you do or suddenly likes all the things you like without respecting all the back work that got you to that place? It seems incredibly disrespectful to me.

I think of people I have been friends with and why certain friendships thrived or faded. One of my best friends has been a girl named Rachel. We met in grad school, and we still keep in contact occasionally, despite not living in the same state. Why do I think Rachel is so great? Because Rachel is her own person. She had her own likes, dislikes, tastes, style, and distinct impulsivity. We each had our own confident personalities, and our two personalities meshed. She didn't care if I wanted to stay in my room and work on my dissertation for weeks on end and not talk to her that whole time. When she was off doing her own thing, I didn't have a fit. We respected each other. I loved her love for 70s rock although I preferred circa 2003 indie rock or 1960s music. We never tried to imitate or copy each other but rather loved that the other person had their own tastes.

People might say that imitation is flattering. I don't think so, not usually. I think there is a difference between imitation/copying and integrating good principles and making them your own. Sure, it's nice to see what works for another person and then researching it yourself and seeing if that might work for you, in your own unique way. I mean, we are encouraged to be like Christ, right? He told us to be baptized, right? But that doesn't mean by John the Baptist in the River Jordan. He told us to take the Sacrament, but we don't have to use the same type of bread He did. We are encouraged to marry in the Temple, but the Apostles don't say "But it must be in the Salt Lake Temple." We are taught principles to follow in the Gospel, but we often personalize them (other than ordinances, which are specific).

Formulating an identity must be more than just reappropriation or it doesn't mean anything. You can't just steal someone's haircut, musical tastes, clothing style, habits, shopping choices, and say that it is "you." It's not you. It's you trying to be that other person. And that's just disrespectful. It's like how any true subculture member hates posers. Why do real punks hate Hot Topic? Maybe it's because they spent years honing their musical collection, making their jackets and clothes, collecting badges, going through the emotional angst, etc. and then some 12 year old goes to Hot Topic and copies all their hard work with a credit card and little to no thought. It's lazy and misses the whole point.

The point of identity formulation is just that—formulating your own identity. It means going through a lot of bad decisions, styles, haircuts, music that sucks, etc. in order to find what does work for you. The end product isn't the identity so much as all the work that it took you to get there.

It took me almost 27 years to get to the point where I am now. I have little respect for someone who tries to copy the person I am now to try to be my friend or try to have the personality or happiness I have. It doesn't work like that. Always being one step behind someone else doesn't guarantee what they have or who they are now. They probably won't respect you for it, they might even resent you: there's a reason they are one step ahead now—they have left that other person behind for a reason. People grow up, grow out of things, and they most likely don't want that old person thrown back in their face.

Be your own person. Don't just reappropriate. Respect the culture of an individual's identity. Get your own personality. Go through the work to get there. Growing up, I tried to copy certain people, sure. I listened to bands they did or shopped thrift stores like the people I wanted to be like did. But it wasn't until I stopped trying to gain approval and mellowed out that I actually became happy and did gain that approval. It wasn't until I researched things myself and tried things out that I understood the importance of the process. For instance, I would try to go through friends' music collections but then I finally studied the sociology of rock and roll—read books, listened to different bands that influenced other bands, etc. I tried to follow the process of how the music I listened to currently evolved, and I gained a respect for that musical culture. I gained taste.

It took awhile, and now I've moved on to other things. We change, we have to change. Just let the change be your own, not someone else's. Let your life mean something to you.