Reading Proust has been helping me so much as I continue to explore my identity!!!

I used to ask literally all day…Who am I? What am I about? Why do I feel like some people don’t understand me? Why would one person say I am this way when I am not? Do I even understand me?  Questions like that and millions more. And it’s not that I don’t ask those questions anymore but I just ask them differently with the understanding that although the exploration of identity is important, we are all a part of something so much bigger than ourselves and with the understanding that my personal identity is unfixed.

As for one’s personal identity… I have no idea if I will ever “know who I am” or what that would even consist of but I have been grappling with the idea that there is no such thing as a fixed self or a fixed identity. It is not stagnant.

I’ve studied a little bit of James Marcia’s theory about identity and it basically supports this “unfixed” idea. We all get to identity achievement but then “disequilibrium” occurs and a period of re-construction begins. During this period a person may regress to an earlier identity status. It is crucial that old constructs fall so that new ones that are more encompassing of the person’s identity may be constructed. In the re-construction process there is still continuity with the previous identity, however the newer construction is broadened to include new life experiences and commitments. Which is totally cool this intertwining between our previous identities and new identities. At every moment we are moving in a direction; at least every conscious moment. Habit or our “unconscious” moments may be the exception. I am still not entirely understanding this but as I read more Proust… I think I might haaha. But anyways yeah. Unfixed identity. I believe one of the biggest preventions to growth is when we are who we are today trying to be who we were yesterday. We can’t be afraid of letting ourselves change… even if who we find is unfamiliar.

This “unfixed identity” idea, in some ways, seems like common sense but it’s not as easy to accept as you would think. Its been really hard for me to understand. For example, the idea for my final paper for this class started by looking at the reasons that so many people are getting divorced. I have found that the whole, “he/she is not the person he/she used to be” is a thing! In Tim Keller’s, “The Meaning of Marriage” there is a quote in there that says, “Marriage is learning to love the stranger to whom you find yourself married.” We have to be aware of the fact that we and others are constantly changing, shifting, moving and helping/hoping others are changing for the good as we strive to do the same.