Oscar Wilde had once rightly remarked;
“Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else’s opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation.”
The age of uncertainty, the epoch of rationality, the era of tumult and stagnation has actually belched us up with opportunities to introspect and reflect on “who we are”,i.e. our identities…. the term which many of us are so proud to exaggerate while others stick at nothing to veil who they are.
Personally, I have always been bewildered by the weird rules of the weirdest societies which has no “written well knit set of laws” to command obedience but seems to engulf every issue from the ambit of its judgemental perspective. It is highly satirical that though neither our surnames nor our ancestral hierarchy was our choice, it’s actually these parameters which define our “identity”.
Before being bogged down by the stupendous cacophony of our imposed identities, let’s re-envision the word “identity” and its parameters . Who are we?? someone’s daughter, someone’s wife, relative of some reputed scientist, cousin of a renowned businessman, the grandson of a prodigal entrepreneur or the ensuing trail of such innumerable indelible relationships forged to define ourselves?? If we are out to creating identities, to build ourselves, to achieve the epitome of our success by our sheer merit and determination, aren’t these parameters too sacrosanct , patriarchal and hypocritical for a society that encourages youths to build and imitate identities at the same pace…
On the contrary before confining this argument into a plank of self-centred individualism, let’s reminisce the last time we were ecstatic when we heard our names being called out or our “identities being highlighted as an individual” without a reference….it’s that inexplicable joy when a child hears her name being announced over the microphone for winning a competition , it’s that childlike pleasure that a middle aged housewife indulges in, on being addressed by her name without a surname in a local market, it’s the precipice of a new beginning when mundane references fade out into the oblivion to usher in a salubrious mindset where we are attuned to who we are, to our prized “identity”.
At this juncture when the pandemic ravaged world has metamorphosised every sphere of life into a veritable tinderbox, supplemented by the untold miseries of the migrants and compounded by the grippling economic recession, it’s high time that we begin to recognize ourselves as “individual identities” irrespective of our social strata or financial positions and work with renewed hope and enthusiasm to truly unfetter who we really are for the better interest of humanity at large.
Lastly, I strongly appeal to all those sensible minds out there …..before it’s too late to recoup the lost talents under the weight of suppressed identities , before it’s too late to raise our voice for identifying our identity, before we surrender our prized names at the altar of someone else’s deeds, let’s pause for a moment and question ourselves “IS MY IDENTITY REALLY MINE????”