Reaching For Identity
Searching for identity can feel like grabbing at clouds. Just when you think you’re holding the truth, it slips through your fingers.
That’s because truly understanding someone else’s identity is an out-of-body kind of experience. It’s one thing to see it on paper. It’s another thing to feel it your bones.
“The shortest distance ... See more
Searching for identity can feel like grabbing at clouds. Just when you think you’re holding the truth, it slips through your fingers.
That’s because truly understanding someone else’s identity is an out-of-body kind of experience. It’s one thing to see it on paper. It’s another thing to feel it your bones.
“The shortest distance ... See more
And so, as we grow up, we identify not only with the sense of being here as boundless aware presence, and not only with our individual personhood, but we also identify with all these categories, ideas, beliefs and stories. If you insult a category I feel identified with, I feel personally threatened, hurt and insulted. If you question my political ... See more
At the end, all that’s left of you are your possessions. Perhaps that’s why I’ve never been able to throw anything away. Perhaps that’s why I hoarded the world: with the hope that when I died, the sum total of my things would suggest a life larger than the one I lived.
Nicole Krauss • The History of Love: A Novel
I want to untie my name, slip it off me, throw it away, forget it. But on other occasions she was more relaxed. It happened—let’s say—that I called her hoping to persuade her to talk to me about her text and, although she forcefully denied its existence, continuing to be evasive, it sounded as if my phone call had surprised her in the middle of a c
... See moreElena Ferrante • The Story of the Lost Child: Neapolitan Novels, Book Four
This is why, for so many people, a large part of their sense of self is intimately connected with their problems. Once this has happened, the last thing they want is to become free of them; that would mean loss of self.