Moving to a new place gives us a fabulous opportunity to redefine our IDENTITIES. But before we think about redefining our identities, we must understand what the "identity" really is. Even if in a different context, I like how Jessica Valenti defines the term "IDENTITY" (paraphrasing from her book, "Sex object: a memoir"):
"Identify is partly "what we tell ourselves", partly "what we tell others about ourselves", and partly "what others tell us about ourselves""
Therefore, there are three parts of our identity:
(a) What we tell ourselves about ourselves: This is how we perceive ourselves. This perception may not always be completely true as our own perception is always filtered through our own presumptuous, insecurities, and knowledge of the world. For instance, suppose a husband wants to decide everything his wife does, including the small and insignificant decisions like what she eats and wears. This, in reality, shows his deep-seated belief that he should control everything his wife does, as well as his fear that he may lose control of his wife. An unrefined man will see this without a filter and accept to himself that he is doing this to have control over his wife because she needs to be controlled (but wouldn't agree to his fear of losing control, which is perceptibly against his manliness). However, another man who believes himself to be more modern and refined, would see his controling behaviour as expression of love and benevolence towards his wife. The point is that our insecurities and character act as filter to our own understanding of ourselves. This is how we see ourselves in the present.
(b) What we tell others about ourselves: This is how we want to be seen by the others. It has a lot to do with who these "others" are, what we expect from these "others", and what do we think that they expect from us. For instance, the same husband who is actually scared of losing control over his wife (given his deep seated belief that he must control his wife's choices as the man of the house), may present his desire to control in different ways in front of different people. For instance, when he is alone with his wife at a restaurant, he may not even ask his wife before ordering food for her. However, when he is in a social setting where he wants to show to the people how liberal or modern he is, he may present his control as love and make a comment like "I know what my wife loves to eat at this restaurant" before ordering on her behalf. By making such a comment in front of other people he wants to be seen as loving, caring, refined, and modern. This is more about how we want to be perceived by the others in the present as well as in future.
(c) What others tell us about ourselves: Since we live in a society, we always get subtle hints from the society about how we should behave. The social expectations also makes us to realign both "how we perceive ourselves" and "what we tell others about ourselves". Many a times these expectations may be conflicting with each other as we move from one group of people to the other, leading to socially confused individuals. For instance, a husband may have grown up with the belief that the wife needs to be controlled. At the same time, he also wants to be seen as a refined man. However, the social cues tells him that a refined man doesn't behave in a controlling manner. In the lack of proper critical thinking, he may just start to act as if he is not controlling, and present his control as love. When he sees that the people are fooled by the act, he feels satisfied. Similarly, the social expectations have often been considered as the cause of submissive behaviour of women.
Having defined what IDENTITY really is, we must now think over how moving places helps to redefine our identity. However, before that we must question why do we need to redefine our identity.
As we learn and grow our personality, we slowly grow out of our old perception of ourselves i.e. how we used to "see ourselves". Now that we think that we are a different person, we tell different things to ourselves about ourselves. However, the other two parts of our personality i.e. what we tell about ourselves to others as well as what others tell us about ourselves is set in concrete, more or less. Telling others about the "new us" is usually lost in joke. People keep telling us about the "old us" and set the expectations accordingly. We feel stuck and suffocated.
Now moving to a new place helps us to change the later two parts of our personality. Since we see new people, what we tell them is about the "new us". They set their expectations accordingly. They evaluate the "new us" and give us the feedback based on their expectations of the "new us". Therefore, we should try to use this opportunity very carefully to define the "new us" and present this "new us" to the new people as the real us.
Therefore, moving places and among new people gives us the wonderful opportunity to redefine all parts of our identity, especially the perception of the others. However much we claim we do not care about what people think, it is impossible not to use their reactions and feedbacks to evaluate ourselves. Therefore, it is also important to surround us with the people whose feedbacks and reactions would help us to grow into someone we aspire to grow into.
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