Just a warning, this post may come off as rambling. Overall I think I did a decent job of keeping the rambling in check, but make your own judgment.

We distinguish ourselves from one another by giving ourselves names, identification numbers, etc. This becomes one of our first labels in life to try and define who we are. Clearly, a human is mutable: every experience changes the individual in some manner, even if it is merely by recording the event in memory.

Technically speaking, our first identification is determined at the first moment we are deemed to be a “human being,” because we fall into that set of qualities that makes us human. The rest of our identification gets set over time. While there are a few parts that we do not have a say in, most of it is open to our choosing.

So how many identities can a person have? Name, Social Security number (for U.S. citizens), religious affiliation, profession, high school graduating class, college graduating class, political views, and hobbies are just many of the things that we commonly use to label ourselves in order to find like-minded individuals in the world that we can communicate or do things with, regardless of the setting. There’s nothing wrong with this; we have to find someway to navigate the “chaos” that is life.

My question is this: do you define your identity, or do you let your identity define you?

Before I go further into that, I feel that there are actually two different identities that people struggle with on a daily basis. One is the “perceived” identity, the other is the “actual” identity. The perception is who the person sees themselves as, while the actual is who they really are. For some people, these can be in sync, and for me personally, it is a goal to get them in sync.

But what happens when that perception is not something that the person created themselves, but something that was pushed upon them by events and experiences? What if other individuals inflicted a perceived identity upon someone else? That person is then living with a perception of who they are that may be completely different from their actual identity, or may continually be determined to change their actual identity to fit the imagined perception.

The perception is to be changed, the actual is who you are. The perception becomes an embodiment of your goals, something you can evolve and strive to be, but one step at a time.