Finding One'S Self In Beloved

1758 Words8 Pages
The journey towards finding one’s self is a long and arduous one, twisting and turning in every direction. The destination is a personal identity -- a definition of who one is, independent of anyone else. Some people find a straight path that leads them directly to the discovery of themselves. Other people take a road that has many switch-backs and obstacles to overcome, but eventually these people will make it to the destination of self as well. But there are still others who get lost along the way. The process of finding one’s self is strongly reliant upon our interactions with other people. From the beginning, as infants, to when we are still small children, we have no idea who we are or what our relationship to the world is. Our perceptions of the world are through the eyes of our parents or guardians and other adults who try to teach us and show us the world. They instill in us their own ideas of right and wrong, good and bad. As we grow, our peers have much influence over how we define ourselves. We constantly have the desire to fit in and belong, sometimes altering ourselves to be like others. In addition, they too have been growing and learning in their own environment with different family members’ influences. Each of our own influences, in turn, influences others. From there, we again take in and learn what we can so we can make our own decisions on how to define our selves. Later, society influences our thoughts on who we are as people and our relation to the world as a whole. There is a constant norm that people try to assimilate to or diverge from. Society presents its own ideas of who we should be as people, and it is then our own job to take that information and do what we will with it to make our own definition for ourselves of who we are. Two things can happen when we are required to base our definition of self on others.
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