Masters Of Our Fate Research Paper

In our daily life, there are a bunch of distractions which influence our daily life. Distractions which may always affect people’s life, behaviors, and identities. If people do not know themselves well, they actually would undeveloped their language of identity. A language of identities means people need to know themselves well and when they are in a society they can make themselves united with others. Andrew Solomon, the author of the essay “Son,” talks about two kinds of identities which are vertical and horizontal. Vertical identities always pass down from the parents, but horizontal identities may acquire from peer group like being gay or deaf. Individuals who with horizontal identities which are much easier to know their language of identities.

Have you really understood what made you who you are? Let me clarify the answer by saying that we’re a mix of the personal and environmental factors that corresponds. Meaning, the persona sculpts us, just the same way as the environment. I’m convinced; Kate Chopin explores this in her 1892 short story Désirée’s Baby. In the story, the racist attitudes, and the prejudice society stimulates Desiree’s selfhood. Chopin questions whether we should jeopardise our self-dignity to preserve our identity?

Unfortunately, the search for such a new identity all too often proves to be a painful and fruitless odyssey. Yet like the water that's always attracted by gravity, the human soul is constantly and relentlessly evolving—along with the world around it. Thus in the end, we often are left only with ourselves rather than labels and concepts.

Recently I had someone say to me, “we don’t know who we are because we are all a product of our environment.” That said, the question remains: Are we defined by our environment and merely a product of it, or we posses the ability to make decisions despite it? The age old question of who am I kept stirring in my mind. It got me thinking about how I define myself and how the environment that I grew up in has shaped me. My first thought was “Wait a minute I know who I am, I think?” So I made a list of the obvious; wife, mother, sister, daughter, granddaughter, niece, etc. Looking at that list I realized that those “labels” were just words used to define my relationships to other people.

Ernest Becker describes the meaning of birth, self, and death in society and how it relates to one’s personal development. The differences between animal and human meaning of life is the language developed by humans and the recognition of self through personal pronouns. Becker describes one’s personal recognition as once development of independence; however, it is developed from the views and values of their parental forces. The concept that I struggled with mostly with Becker’s ideology of one’s personal development was the absence of independent views from society and others. Since we make objects or feelings symbolic by observing others to create a mindset on items, I believe we lose the ability to understand what are “true” inner selves are. Becker does state though that children who have more experiences in earlier life develop more resilience towards social symbol systems and develop a sense of self.

Outside influences have a strong capability to influence and alter our personal identity. Both directly and indirectly, the social contexts in which we live can change the way we think and feel, and by extension how we interact with other people and places. Immediate family, friendship groups and the physical environment are all factors which contribute to our ever changing perceptions of ourselves. Sometimes personal identity can be subtly reshaped over a gradual time frame, as our sense of who we are is modified without personal recognition that we are changing. At other times we may be able to notice our personal identity changing, through important life decisions.

Erikson also noted that identity is not only developed by the individual but also, through interaction with, recognition and confirmation of friends and family. Showing how just like in particular Internet sites, children learn social competence through “cliques” and large crowds of people who impose various types of influences (Schöpflin). This concept relates back to two assumptions based on identity. “Identity” is currently used in two concurrent senses, one of which is “personal” and the other “social” (Schöpflin). In the first aspect of identity, an individual’s identity is some distinctive trait, or a fixed category, that that person views as socially significant but more-or-less unchangeable. In other words, an identity is given to you. One of the key principles of developmental psychology, applicable to personal identity change, is continuity and discontinuity. In simple terms, this discusses what changes and what stays the same within an individual over time. From the moment of birth to the last day of life, people change along numerous parallel pathways, including association, cognizance, social skills and emotion. Discontinuity occurs when differences between a person of one age and either earlier or subsequent ages appear rather brusquely rather than steadily. Discontinuity tends to be seen when children hit ‘milestones,’ like their first steps and words. Just the day prior, the child did not have these behaviors but they still emerged with little warning. Some

For many, the concept of controlling one’s own destiny is an attractive thought. Perhaps the reason for the notion being admired so broadly lies within the definition of the word itself; “the inevitability of events that will happen” implies that whatever good that is promised for a person will be safe from any obstacles that may interfere with their future. However, despite the comfort of the promise itself, the actual ability to control one’s own destiny is highly subjective and often influenced by a number of outside factors, including the society in which they were raised, their class position, and, unfortunately, their race.

According to Erik Erikson, adolescence is marked by the child’s questioning his or her identity during what he refers to as the identity versus identity confusion developmental stage. During this phase, the adolescent becomes mindful of his or her identity and seeks his or her purpose in life, as well as the answer to the eternal question, “who

Fate. The supposed power that controls every single aspect of our lives. This very debate of fate is what has been control people’s lives alone, not the actual aspect of fate. Fate could be real. If it is real, then there is nothing that any person can do to stop it. But the more plausible reality is that fate does not actually exist. The concept that everything has been preplanned for us is impossible because just one person can change the series of the world’s events in just one hour.

Identity is first confronted in adolescence between the ages 12 – 19 years old, due to physical and hormonal changes in the body. An introduction to formal operations in cognitive development and societal expectation contributes to an individual’s identity to be explored and established (McAdams, 2009), this also leads to the discovery of one’s identity, however the (internal and external) forces that promote identity development, usually creates a sense of tension within/ for the individual. The basic task is, in Erikson’s terms, “fidelity or truthfulness and consistency to one’s core self or faith in one’s ideology”, in a nutshell: "Who am I and where am I going?" (Fleming, 2004:

Who am I? What is my place in the world? What do I want to do with my life? These are some of the most fundamental if not somewhat cliche questions that we as humans ask ourselves. From the moment of birth, we begin on our long journey toward not only discovering the world around us but also discovering ourselves. Although the journey of self-discovery is lifelong, most developmentalists agree that it is during the adolescent years that we seriously begin to consider the question of who am I? One of the most famous people to describe

V. S. Naipaul, a Nobel Prize-winning British writer, once said “One isn’t born one’s self. One is born with a mass of expectations, a mass of other people’s ideas – and you have to work through it all.” (as cited in Gussow, 1994, para. 1). We as humans normally attempt to find our true identity. One isn’t born one’s self but needs to work with a mass of ideas to find the true self as V. S. Naipaul stated. It is not quite an easy process, which involves challenges, struggles and pain. There are various ways to identify oneself and people find a category they fit into and live with that identity. However, there are some people who experience extreme confusion in finding the true self – like Dissociative Identity Disorder (DID) patients. DID patients

Environments we occupy, experiences, or even simple events that are but a speck in the length of life are catalysts in the process of defining who we are, what we are, and how we are. The correlation between an individual’s character, views, and attributes that label them as such, are always derived from the past, the past’s past, and before that as well. This is me, for whom the individual is, is molded through the life’s course they have so benevolently experienced. I am what my adoption has made me, what my home life has given me, and what my social life has taken from me; the importance of these experiences can be of scrutiny from a third-party. Perspective of another individual, however, has never meant much to me to begin

Our identity can sometimes be shaped by the way others see us. As we have seen, the way in which others view us can have some sort of impact on how we see ourselves. There are also other contributing factors such as our years of adolescence, the basic human need of wanting to belong and maturing; all play an equally important part in the forming of our character and who we are. On balance it appears that there is not only one influence in the shaping of our identity, but there are many.