Who I Am... Who We Are

I had to write about how I fit in a Global Society for a class and this is what I came up with:

I’ve never really claimed to belong to any particular group of people. With my friends from childhood and high school, I was always a floater who could identify easily with many. And always, though the ties for identifying were strong, there was also always something that made me unique or different from the rest, or at least that’s how I looked at it. I wanted to be an individual; I wanted to claim my own personhood; I wanted independence. But I also wanted to be part of something, to share experiences with others, to belong.

It wasn’t until I moved from Colorado the summer after my senior year, however, that I ever felt any deep belonging to anything. It was then I discovered I was a Coloradan. Red dirt and the outdoors, ran through my veins. I identified with the mountains; they symbolized my free spirit. I identified with the sun; it was my joy that I carried inside. I identified with the starry night sky; it held all my hopes, dreams and memories. In my new environment of Michigan, for a long time I couldn’t find anything familiar, anything to relate to. It was a different place entirely and I was going to have to find a new church, make new friends, get used to weather changes and scenery changes and adjust in numerous other ways that I had never anticipated. 

I had always been a traveler, but never a mover. I’d been to Mexico, Bulgaria, Guatemala and Turkey, about ten weeks in all. Not to mention there were multiple other places in the United States that my family had gone to on vacations. Each of my touring visits have helped me understand a small part of another culture with other traditions. I liked looking from afar while subconsciously telling myself that I really was seeing another culture with open eyes. Moving was another thing entirely, and it shook my little world more than I had ever expected. I was so focused on the things that were different that I didn’t recognize the beauty of another viewpoint. 

This summer however, I resigned myself to the fact that I wasn’t going to be living in Colorado any time soon and began to seek out new adventures in my new home of Michigan. I began to appreciate the water, and the damp air, the beautiful snowfall and the gift of good friends and laughter. It was then I realized that identity was something I carried with me. I am who I am because of where I came from, who I’ve known, and the experiences I’ve had. And who I am is always changing and traveling different places. 

I was pleasantly surprised when I went back to Colorado this winter and the feeling of home had vanished. It wasn’t something to be disappointed about, it was actually a joyful realization that my identity was with me, where I was, doing what I was doing.  In Michigan, when the stars shine bright, they are the same stars, and when the sun peaks through the clouds on a winter day, it is the same sun. I am who I am because of where I came from, who I’ve known and the experiences I’ve had, which now includes these past two years in Michigan. 

I think that people so often identify themselves with some place, or a certain group of people without taking time to discover the unity and similarities that bind us all together. I’m not saying that because we all live on the same planet we can all understand each other. That would be a blatant lie. Fights break out every day because people can’t cope with their differences. And on a larger scale, wars develop for the same reason. The differences in language make it hard for people to communicate, and the differences in ways of life make it hard for people to interact. But people focus so often on creating barriers between one another that they never take the time to really understand one another for their uniqueness. 

I’m not saying that there should be one language and one society with one tradition, for that would be compromising the very thing that makes the world so special, but there should be a desire to perceive people as they are, for the things that make them special, for the things that set them apart, as well as those that make them belong. When I finally looked deeper, I found there is something that unifies us all. Whether from a different country, a different state, or a different town or simply a different family, we are all human beings, living on one planet, under one sun and one moon. We are citizens of the world, living in a global society. We strive to understand each other, fail, then try again. And maybe our trying will eventually lead to not imitation, but belonging.