Identity is in the eye of the beholder. The problem starts when you realize that some people are urgently in need of glasses.
My body and my face, to give a few examples, contain certain information: that I’m a man, more or less. That there is no need to ask me for an ID when I buy cigarettes.
Also, when I speak English, my accent reveals the fact that I was not born in the US or in the UK, or in Australia, for that matter.
Once upon a time, over dinner in New York, a woman said to me, “The way you pronounce ‘Julia Roberts’ is so French.” She thought that French men were not to be trusted, and although I tried to convince her that I was not French, which I am not, we never saw each other again.
It might have been my looks, my conversation skills, my table manners, maybe even my deodorant. I prefer to blame my accent.
That’s identity: a strange animal, which we can blame for our failures.
What you are is what cannot be changed. But since it is known that these days, we can change almost everything, there is not much left we can claim as our identity.
I thought of this while reading The Speckless People by Hugo Hamilton.
Hamilton’s father was Irish, his mother German, and he grew up in Dublin.
No English was spoken in Hamilton’s parental home, just German and Gaelic.
The Speckless People answers some important questions about identity.
Now I plan to write my first self-help-book: How To Get Rid of Your Identity in 30 Days.