revision

Do You Know Who You Are?
People choose who they want to be in life, and there are many different factors that go into the final product or what gives someone their identity. The personal choices someone makes are what help’s form their identity. A person creates his or her own identity by choosing different characteristics like clothing, personal habits, even their own name. Those examples are part of what gives each person his or her own identity.

One thing that plays a role in establishing someone’s identity is his or her name. Although someone doesn’t have a choice when it comes to their name but it plays a part in their identity. In the “F-Word”, Firoozeh Dumas tells a story about how she went through periods of changing her name because it was difficult to say. She decided to change it, but in the end she didn’t feel like that was her true identity and that she was living a fake life. Having a name is a part of what makes someone who he or she is, otherwise someone would become just “that girl with the blonde hair” or “that guy with a face”, and that doesn’t really give someone an individual identity.Dumas tired to change her name “I went from having an identifiably “ethnic” name to having ancestors who wore clogs”, but by changing something so seemly simple as a name threw off her entire identity. It was Firoozeh’s personal choice to experiment with different names to try and form her own identity.

Although someone may be given a name at birth and you can later change it. Someone may see a person as one way when they are really trying to have a different identity. For example someone may see a person as snotty or stuck up when he or she is really trying to be nice. Also what a person looks like can alter other people’s perceptions of someone. A person could dress in all black and look like a bad person but really be the nicest person in the world. I just watch an episode of Britain’s Got Talent and there was a woman named Susan Boyle and she walked up on stage to sing and everyone was laughing at her and making fun of her before she even started to sing. As soon as she started to sing everyone was amazed and immediately stopped laughing. Her voice was so incredible everyone was stunned and began cheering and clapping with a standing ovation. One of the judges even said, “That was the biggest surprise I have had in 3 years on this show.” Identity can change the way people think about other people. In this case Boyle’s physical identity made the audience think that she was just some old woman. But when she sang she blew them away and proved them wrong that just because of her looks.

Everyone has their own personal choice of what they do in their everyday lives. Identity is something that is a creation of someone, part of which is a mixture of who someone wants to be who he or she thinks they are and how they act. How someone lives their life contributes to their identity if someone wanted to be a rock star they wouldn’t sit at home playing video games all day. Identity is a personal choice that every individual makes in their life.

Someone’s identity can be what makes them who they are, or it can be a mixture of what they wear how and what they eat. Who they talk to and how they say what they are going to say. Even someone’s name defines someone’s identity all these factors contribute to the over all identity of a person. Personal choices and other decisions form people and create uniqueness for every person. Everyone is different in his or her own special and unique way and personal choices and they way people want to live their lives is what creates everyone’s own identity.