We are born into an identity – our name, gender, religion, language, and nationality are predetermined by the country, community, and family we belong to. Our personal identity is composed of an inherited identity and a self-curated identity – our family (last) name, our trade (if past through generations), and customs (observing holidays, specific diet – e.g. kosher) are passed on to us from earlier generations. Whereas our self-curated identity is still a result of the influence of society and our socioeconomic status, but it is made of our choices (or our choice to embrace ourselves) such as our occupation, our sexual orientation, our habits (exercising, smoking), etc.
It seems that the clearest and internationally agreed upon as significant identifying characteristics, such as those that appear on one’s passport (e.g. name, gender, and nationality) are assigned at birth. In (some) democratic countries, one can revise those attributions by changing their name, transforming to a different gender than the one assigned to them by their sex, and gaining new citizenship is definitely possible. Yet, the society we live in has the major of control over the identities assigned to us, our ability to revoke them or to attribute other identities to ourselves, especially when those are out of our society’s norms.
The feature image is The Belgian artist, René Magritte’s painting, Son of Man.
I think you make a great point about how we inherit some identities, like our nationality. Sometimes we can’t exactly change who we are. We can’t change the color of our skin or where we came from. Although, there are probably ways that you could change your skin like tanning or bleaching. I don’t think that changes who you truly are though because you can change your appearance but not your inner self. I think many people are ashamed of their skin color, and they shouldn’t be. I think in some cases, we can’t deny certain things about ourselves: where we came from and our nationality. Instead, we should embrace our diversity and our genetics. That being said, we should embrace who we are and sometimes those things about ourselves we can manifest. If you don’t feel that your sex is who you are, you can embrace your inner self and become who you think you are (gender). If you are raised in a Christian household but you don’t have those beliefs, you don’t have to be what you’re not. The point is, sometimes we should embrace certain things that we can’t exactly change so we don’t feel ashamed of ourselves, but for the things that we believe we are that we can absolutely change, we should.