Peter's strongest identity traits

Making Me

Our identities are complex, made of many factors that can be classified in different ways. One common classification of the traits that make up our identities is based on how we come by them. According to this classification, identity traits can be ascribed, achieved or chosen. Because they are very variable, we expect different categories of traits to be strongest for different people. Jill’s chosen traits might be the strongest aspect of her identity, while John’s identity might be most strongly influenced by his achieved traits. For myself, although my first idea was that my chosen traits were the strongest, further reflection led me to conclude that in fact my ascribed traits are the strongest, which I think is probably also typical. 

First, my achieved traits are important to me. I’m proud of my academic record at Sydney University, where I did well in my chosen areas of study, mainly philosophy, mathematics and a couple of dead languages. My achieved identity as an honours graduate who won awards and scholarships for graduating first in the class my major certainly pleased my mother. Another achieved trait that is part of my  identity that is significant is my work as a teacher, where I hope I also help my students to achieve their goals that become a part of their identity. 

However, important though they be, my achieved traits matter less to me personally than do my chosen traits and have had a bigger impact on the course my life has taken to make me who I am today. While my academic achievements gave me options, it was what I chose to do with those achievements that really created my identity. If I had not chosen to visit Thailand many years ago, my life would have been very different. 

But what makes our achievements possible if not the situation and abilities ascribed to us at birth? I was born into a comfortably off family in Australia. That gave me not only my identity as an Australian, and the benefits of English as a native language, but also my family name and the advantages that came with that. Because of my ascribed status as their son, my parents happily cared for me, ensuring that I got the education that let me achieve the foundations for the choices I subsequently made. It was not only the ascribed position in life that came with when, where and to whom I was born; the truly unchangeable genes that I inherited from my parents created both the body and the brain that make me the person I am. As I’ve already said, the environment I was born into played an important role in forming my identity, but even more strongly ascribed are the intelligence and personality traits that come at least in part from my genes. Without that particular set of likes, dislikes, interests, emotional responses, personality characteristics and so on, I would have worked to achieve different traits, and I am sure I would have chosen very differently about how to live my life. 

Naturally, all the parts of it, the ascribed, the achieved and the chosen, contribute to my identity, but because of its foundational influence on all the others since at least the day I was born, I have to admit that my ascribed traits are the strongest in my own life. Perhaps for others it is different, but I suspect that for most people, even Jill and John, it was their ascribed traits that their identities are really built on.