My Identity

Note: This is another paper I wrote for class. The assignment was to write out four of the most basic parts of who you are and write a paragraph on each. 

             

 I am a part of many families. I am a daughter to many dads and moms that call me their own. I am a sister to nineteen people from seven different biological families. I am an aunt to two lovely babies, a “foster-aunt” to three more, and a mourning aunt to one lovely child I never got to meet.  I will always hold to and cherish my biological family, to whom I was born, and our foster sister who was brought into it with us. I will also always cherish the lovely family who has taken me in as one of their own, and the wild array of kids from different places who have come to find refuge here. I am lucky to be a part of so many different peoples’ lives. This inevitably changes who I am, as I function as a different piece in many puzzles. I have learned to be the youngest, getting to take risks and entertain. I have learned to be the oldest, the responsible and cautious one. I have learned to be the middle child, blending in and helping out. I have learned to be alone, independent and confused.

I am an INTP. According to the Myers Briggs personality test, I am an introvert, I am intuitive, I am a thinker, and I am perceptive. I value these things greatly because they make up a uniqueness in me that governs how I think and act. My personality is what makes up who I am, or rather, how I am who I am. I can be just as thoughtful, for instance, as someone of different characteristics, but how I got to that thoughtfulness is different, and that what makes me who I am. Being an INTP means that I am often caught up in thoughts of reason and abstractedness. I process things in steps and in logical increments. I see everything in gray until I follow my thoughts to a logical conclusion, which is when gray turns to stark contrast.

I am xenocentric. Xenocentric means foreign-centered, “xeno” meaning foreign in Latin. This word was invented by sociologists to describe a person who has an unhealthy obsession with a foreign culture, but I use it more literally as someone focused on the foreign. Foreign can include anything outside myself, and definitely includes different cultures and countries. I am very passionate about the rest of the world, and strive to bring to light the beauty, goodness, need and injustices that are sometimes not seen unless we start thinking outside ourselves.

I am a child of God. At the most basic level, this is the most significant thing about me. Where I live, how I dress, what I look like and who I am friends with will change. My identity as an adopted daughter as the God of the universe, however, will always remain. This is the most stable part of my identity. This, however, is also the part of my identity that demands change the most. This is the driving force that changes selfishness into selflessness, and pride into humility. This is the part of me that brings to light the things in myself that are not profitable for gain, and overcomes them with good. This is a steady source of steady change.