Identity

Some travel journal musings from March 1st, in Istanbul...

It was just last semester when one of my history professors asked us to write essays on personal identity. Somehow it was easy to write the essay, easy to spew information about the activities and relationships that in many ways define me and have definitely shaped me, fairly simple to compose something that was close to what the professor was looking for -- and yet I left the task deeply unsatisfied. Was that genuine? I asked myself. Is that really who you are, right now? Beneath the surface of trying to keep everything together day to day, there was a part of me that knew the answers were no. I couldn’t really pin down what defined me anymore, though I knew what my cookie-cutter replies should be. It was one of those moments where, if I’d been at home, I would have pulled a dusty shoebox of baby photographs off a shelf in the basement, carried it to my room, sat in patch of sunlight, and looked through images of smiling parents and baby-dimpled Emilie Anne, deeply loved and innocent, her life full and rich ahead of her. But I couldn’t do that...I was miles away from home, swamped by assignments and a cramped schedule and relationships in which I felt inadequate. And so I pushed all those thoughts and uncertainties deeper down inside where maybe they wouldn’t well up to be dealt with. Most of us know that this doesn’t work for very long. I think part of me was also waiting desperately to just get away from Westmont and leave some of these questions behind in the excitement and new formations of time abroad. But -- lo and behold -- it was still the same Emilie that found herself in Turkey, still the same Emilie that didn’t want to wade through murky thoughts for fear of getting stuck in the mud and watching, as if in a bad dream, the rest of the world pass by unhindered. 

It shouldn’t really come as much of a surprise to me that it is here in Turkey that I’ve really started to evaluate my identity, a still somewhat vague idea of self worth and purpose and motivation all meshed together with an intertwining of the past, the present, and the future. One would think that being abroad in an unfamiliar country, surrounded by strangers speaking in a language we can’t usually understand, would not be much of a confidence booster in the way of solidifying one’s selfhood. I said something to this effect to Lauren (in a conversation we were having over domates çorba), to which she replied that maybe it is during these times that we most discover who we are, because we have nothing else to rely on. We are surrounded, even invaded, by the unfamiliar and by otherness. As long as we do not put up walls that keep everything out altogether, the challenges we face in confronting this newness compel us to fortify ourselves in formerly underdeveloped ways. Not to say that “the Other” should be thought of as a foe; on the contrary, I think that a profound enriching of our lives can occur when we wisely but wholeheartedly surrender the blockades that keep us from interacting with this new invading force that has the power to instill so much exciting change and future openness in our hearts. 

All this to say that when I have very little of my usual lifestyle and comforts (be they relationships, places, activities, etc.) to fall back upon in defining myself, I am forced to turn both inward and outward -- in a manifestation of my personality, sense of identity, actions, and behaviors -- in such a way that would never have been possible were I at Westmont or back in Washington right now. Jim had once told us how he came to the realization that “you are a human being, not a human doing.” If nothing else, this is something I realize I really want to carry home with me at the end of this time abroad: a sense that my identity comes not as much from what I decide to fill up my time with on a daily basis as much as from a deeper understanding of who I am no matter what I’m doing or where I’m living or with whom I’m interacting. With my interactions with Turks here, it’s somehow clearer to me how I am perceived as an individual, i.e. what aspects of my personality people are drawn to and what sides of myself could be eradicated to make me more whole and healthy, both internally and in communicating and connecting with people. Living abroad is kind of like visiting a hamam for the first time: you’re apprehensive, maybe even insecure, about the thought of being naked in front of so many strangers as well as your friends...as you first enter the hamam you clutch your towel tightly around your body...then someone wrenches it deftly away from you, and you are exposed. You can have one of two reactions, or maybe a mingling of the two: a moment of sheer terror when you confront the fact that you are fully uncovered and vulnerable...or a time of enjoyment in the liberating realization that everybody has bodies, everyone is on equal footing, and that overall the hamam experience is quite invigorating, relaxing, and candid. Maybe it is good to have a sense of both, to overcome the former with the latter. Life abroad is like this: it can be a shock when the towel of your old assumptions about yourself (or the circumstances under which you function well) is simply whisked away from you, and you’re left wandering around vulnerably like Adam and Eve in the Garden after the Fall wanting desperately to cover yourself. Yet when you realize that you can no longer live by guise or disguise, you are able to bask in the experience for exactly what it is. It’s just you, plain and simple...and those who surround you, whether as friends or as strangers.