We spend a lifetime creating it and perfecting it, yet we’re also never happy with it. When you’re young, everyone says that you’re searching for it, and when you’re old you may begin to wonder what happened to it. Yes, I’m talking about your identity. Sense of self, label, or whatever you’d like to call it, your identity is one of the most important parts of you, whether you acknowledge it or not. Upon graduating from high school, I’ve realized a few things about identity that I never acknowledged before, and I felt were worth sharing.

• The Value of a Name: It wasn’t until they began calling my name at graduation and awards ceremonies, and I saw it written on announcements and certificates that I realized the significance of my own name. It is a lifetime gift from your parents to you, and it is something that you will never lose. As a woman, when I get married, I may choose to take my husband’s name or to keep my own, and when I have a child it is something that I may pass down to him or her. It doesn’t matter what you change about yourself throughout your life, what you do or where you go, your name will follow you. Value your name and love it for what it is, for it is yours, and it holds years of memories behind it.
• The Gift and Curse Labels: Labels make things easier for us, per se. Especially as a young adult, when you’re trying to find yourself, attaching a label to your identity makes it easier to make friends, describe yourself, and find your place in your community. When you share a label with a group, you have something in common with those people, which leads you to be more inclined to associate yourself with those people and look for friends inside of that given community. This is what I consider the gift. The curse, on the other hand, is that when people have labels, they are often times afraid to seek activities and do things not typically associated with that label.
• Identity is Constantly Changing: You may wake up one day and decide you’re not into sports anymore, even though you have been for the past twenty years of your life, and that’s OK. Just as your interests are constantly shifting, your identity is shifting with them. You are a culmination of all the people you have met, everything you have experienced and done, every book you’ve ever read and every song you’ve ever heard. We pick and choose the things that make up who we are, and decide whether we like them or not. Blue? I’m a fan of that color. Purple? Not so much. Sure, it’s a little more complicated idea than that, but you get the idea.

All of that being said, remember that you are more than what you identify with. There is a person behind all of those labels and all of that experience deciding who you really are at your core. To those who look past the outer shell of your identity and into the center where your personality and soul lies, keep them. Who you are on the outside will shift all of your life, and you will constantly be changing your habits and opinions, but the values and emotions that make you who you are will always be with you, from beginning to end. Once you understand your soul, you will find peace. All of the labels in the world cannot give the fulfillment that knowing who you are behind a few superficial titles can give.