Flattening Identity

Of all the belongings one can have, belonging to an identity and keeping it is perhaps what defines us.

Born as an immigrant, I have been an immigrant on every continent where I have lived. I suppose one can call it “immigrant recidivism” when one never becomes indigenous to the context, even after decades of being there.

While that is the observation or outcome, the reason of the “thousand shades of an immigrant” surely varies. Some try to “melt” and become part of the pot’s porridge; others want to find a win-win alternative to remain an immigrant yet be mostly unnoticed as such; and there are those who feel at peace only when their inherited identity is protected and cherished only by remaining an immigrant.

I have written about identity, published essays and books in different languages, and ended up with a motto that seems to encapsulate my observations about myself and others. I have proposed that “There is no “I” in Identity”. That, being who we are, while it can be a personal decision, is often defined by who we were. And if it is true that with time and age we become our parents, then I think the definition of identity evolves over time, and eventually takes a dominant posture along that time spectrum.

… I finished reading Thomas Friedman’s “The World is Flat: a Brief History of the Twenty-First Century” and while the book is not about identity, it seems to indirectly touch on that topic. There was a specific passage in there where the author meets with young Indian job-seekers in India and helps them learn how to speak American English, specifically the pronunciation of words as Minnesotans would. The goal was for these young Indians to do telemarketing and not letting folks in America know that they were calling from India. This supports the book’s thesis that the world is increasingly flat and that the opportunities are available to all no matter where one is on this otherwise round globe.

But that passage on page 27 ended with this:

“On the surface, there is something unappealing about the idea of inducing other people to flatten their accents in order to compete in a flatter world. But before you disparage it, you have to taste just how hungry these kids are to escape the lower end of the middle class and move up. If a little accent modification is the price they have to pay to jump a rung of the ladder, then so be it—they say.”

I looked at that page for a long while. The author was talking about a purposeful changing of accent, but my mind was to change of identity. I have seen many who tried to melt and become part of that pot’s porridge by first changing their accent. Then changing their name (I have received many calls from India where the caller identified himself as “Burt” or herself as “Sandy”…) Then stop mentioning where they were born but instead stress where in America or The United Kingdom they went to college.

… As I continued to look at that page and letting my mind travel free, I recalled a line by James Allen from his work As a Man Thinketh:

                                              The oak sleeps in the acorn

Indeed. And in the case of identity, we are both oak and acorn: while we have extended deep roots in our ground, we need to make sure our acorns remember they came from oak trees. Not just this oak tree but the ones before.  In some way, the oak sleeping in the acorn need to have a dream.  An old dream.  A dream forests of oak trees have had, even if many have been cut with rusty axes.

The acorns have survived.

… As I turned the page, I remembered a line from Paulo Coelho in The Alchemist:

     The only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure.

An oak tree drops many acorns. It does not matter if some do not wake up from that dream.

February 9, 2015

© Vahé A. Kazandjian, 2015