by Susantha Hewa

No person who speaks a language and moves in society can think of living a ‘normal’ life without using the word “I” perhaps hundreds of times every day, and we are pretty sure that every time one uses it one refers to the same entity, “I”, which one considers ‘solid and unvarying’. However, this is to forget that each person has numerous identities and it is the context in which one finds oneself, thinks and acts that determines ‘which identity’ he or she “wears” at any given moment.

If a hale and hearty physician, who is at work, in a ward, were struck by some debilitating illness, and laid in a bed, he would suddenly undergo a change of his ‘identity,’ from that of a doctor to a patient, in his own mind, and in relation to his fellow workers, and the entire system, which had up to now defined his position as a physician. This is not to deny that he is no longer a doctor; only he has now a predominant identity of a sick person who feels helpless and earns the sympathy of others and whose safety is in the hands of others with whom he had worked and enjoyed a sense of power and prestige. Take another example. A powerful patriarch, who is the sole breadwinner and, so to speak, the unchallenged authority in a family, would dramatically change his identity if he gets paralyzed and confined to bed.

A less dramatic and a more widespread instance of this shift of identity is seen when people retire. The lowering of self-esteem may set in gradually when his former relations get less tangible and less stable. In other words, one’s ‘identity’ seems to be a changing image, which is a complex combination of a relational web with the outside world – not an inherent fixed ‘self’.

They say “no man is an island” to suggest that no man is self-sufficient. Perhaps, it is equally true that no man can afford the luxury of being completely self-defined, discounting his constantly changing relations with others and the social milieu in which he finds himself. Perhaps, contrary to what most are accustomed to believe, there is no static “self” to anybody living – not even to a person condemned to living in a dark cell for the rest of his life, provided he retains a semblance of sanity in such an awful condition. His sense of self will be changing as a result of whatever little communication he has with the outside world – for example, if someone comes to push a plate of food through a small opening into his cell every day. Of course, his ‘identity’ would be much less variable than that of a person who is out there, for example, of a teacher who will be shifting from a ‘teacher’ to a pedestrian, passenger, customer, neighbour, husband, father, tax-payer, patient, etc., even in the course of a single day. In the case of the person confined to the dark cell, his predominant identity would be that of a castaway, who might get a remote feeling of a ‘social being’ at moments he is able to catch a glimpse of the person who brings his plate of food.

The circumstantial nature of one’s identity is often illustrated when, for example, we see how different we can be when we are in different settings. A child would be surprised to see his father, who is a clerk, a very different person when he sees him at his office. Perhaps, stage-fear is a classic instance where a person’s awareness of his ‘solid identity’ becomes dramatically brittle when, for example, he is invited to speak a few words before an audience, specially so, if he is not an experienced public speaker. The dry mouth, shaky hands and the wobbly legs are the first signs of his automatic shift of identity, in relation to the audience. Many of us, standing before an audience, become steady, within the first few minutes, as we establish our relationship with those staring at us, provided that nothing disastrous happens, leading to a total loss of composure. That is to say, in so far as the terrain, or the environment, is familiar, we assume and maintain our circumstantial identity with ease and grace. When you confront the ‘other’, as you do when you stand before an audience, your ‘identity’ dissolves until you find your new coordinates in relation to the audience, perhaps as an entertainer, agitator, preacher, etc., according to how you play the game.

As we can see, our ‘identities’ are constructed in the way we notice our closeness to and distance from the others around us. An interesting and a more explicit illustration of this idea is expressed when the two American social psychologists, William J. McGuire and Claire V. McGuire write, “One perceives oneself in terms of characteristics that distinguish oneself from other humans, especially from people in one’s usual social milieu…a woman psychologist in the company of a dozen women who work at other occupations thinks of herself as a psychologist; when with a dozen male psychologists, she thinks of herself as a woman” (Content and Process in the Experience of Self). While you enjoy your annual office outing you feel a surge of camaraderie in a lowering of differences, which evaporates when you are back in office the following day sternly situated in the usual pecking order.

The most harmful, tenacious and, at the same time, deceptive of our identities are the so-called ‘ethnic’ and ‘religious’ identities. Of course, there have been confrontations between various identity groups: between employers and employees; between leaders and followers; between teachers and students, etc. However, none of these identities are as ‘defining’ and ‘conclusive’ as the fake notions of belonging to an ‘ethnic’ or ‘religious’ group despite the pure accidental nature of such identities. A ‘Sinhala’ person may give his life for the sake of the ‘Sinhalese race’ perhaps without knowing that he had been born to Tamil speaking parents and later adopted by a Sinhala speaking family! So is the case with religious fervour.

Should we label ourselves in terms of religion, race, ethnicity, etc.? Can’t one live a happier life without wearing, so to speak, ‘uniforms’ or ‘identities’ that don’t mean anything meaningful? Let’s take, for example, the feeling that one is Buddhist, Christian or Hindu? What is the essential feel of being a Sinhalese, Tamil or Muslim?

Let’s take a Buddhist. What is the nature of the feel of being a Buddhist? Of course, there is no single core-feeling that all Buddhists at all ages, at all times and at all places, share. An adult’s sense of being a Buddhist is a cultivated feeling which differs from one to another, depending on many factors, like age, one’s childhood experiences in relation to religion, level of education, intellectual growth, level of exposure to his inherited religion and also other religions and cultures, employment, later developments in life, experiences that either reinforce or erode acquired religious convictions and economic conditions and even one’s sense of ‘social status’, class, etc. As such, there is no essential fixed feeling of being a Buddhist. So is the case with being a Christian, Hindu or Muslim. During the lifetime of a Buddhist, the so called ‘Buddhist identity’ is in a flux. What’s more, such tenacious perceptions are based on nothing more than a sense of belonging to a community rather than a life based on the religion’s teachings. Apart from specific rituals, any average person, irrespective of his religion, has the same notions of ‘good and bad’, which are acquired from the broader social, economic and cultural context. The labelling only serves the nurturing of illusive and temporary sense of belonging and a superfluous sense of alienation from others. We are better off without them, surely.