Key Points:
- Identity doesn't exist outside of relationships
- To know thyself, know thy relationships
- Identities with the Four Relationships
- Three takeaways
Have you ever wanted to run away to the mountains or the beach just to get away from life? I have. At times, very frequently. Several years ago, I traveled to Amsterdam to work on a collaboration with a university there. Between meetings, tours, and sight-seeing with a work colleague, I had moments where I could be alone.
One day I found myself walking along a random street alone and realized that no one in that area knew who I was. I’d never stepped foot on that street before. All the defining contexts of my life were gone – my family, my job, my friends, my religious organization, and my daily routine. I could be whomever I wanted to be. I remember feeling at once free and puzzled. Free from my schedule, roles, and day-to-day demands it felt like my time became my own. The puzzlement could be summed up in the question: Who am I outside my usual daily routines and environments?
It made me appreciate the significance of life environments and relationships on our sense of self.
Relationships Manifest Identity
Try this idea on for a minute: Identity doesn’t exist outside of relationships.
Think about it. You can’t be a mom, a mechanic, or a meth head without a relationship that creates those identities.
You are a mother when you create, adopt, or care lovingly for a child.
You are a mechanic when you understand and engage with machines.
You are a meth head when you have an intensely dependent relationship with meth and those who provide it.
If somehow children didn’t exist, machines were self-fixing, and meth was never created you couldn’t be a mom, a mechanic, or a meth head. Having the other gives meaning and identity to self.
The contexts of life may change over time and with that so can our identities. For example, what if your kid moves away to college? They are no longer physically present, but you can still be a mother with an empty nest. If you retire from fixing cars, that doesn’t negate your history with machines or your intricate knowledge of mechanical systems. You are a retired mechanic who may help neighbors on the side. If you check into rehab to get clean from meth, the effects of the drug are still going to kick your butt for a while. And once you are back out into daily life, there will be constant opportunities for choosing things other than meth. You are a recovering addict.
Identity doesn’t exist outside of relationships.
Identity is relational to life context, time, people, and ideas. Who you are can’t be divorced from the people and processes of this world.
You can’t be an aunt without a niece or nephew.
You can’t be hermit without a city to retreat from.
You can’t be a rebel without a group to rebel from.
You can’t be a people pleaser without people to please.
You can’t be a workaholic without a yardstick of what a normal work schedule looks like.
You can’t be mentally ill if there is no group who is considered mentally well.
You can’t identify as gender non-binary without a commonly held perception that gender is binary.
If you sit with the congregation, you are a patron. If you stand behind the pulpit, you are the preacher.
When you say yes to working at a fast-food restaurant you are an employee. When you own the joint, you are the employer.
It’s harder for those of us in individualistic societies to wrap our heads around this idea. We want to be unique, independent, and responsible only to ourselves. Again though, you can’t be unique without a group to be different from. You can’t be independent without something to be independent from. You can’t be responsible only to yourself without implying that there are others to whom you could be responsible.
Collectivist cultures tend to have a better grasp on the notion that who we are is product of our relationships. As just one example, there is an ancient African word - Ubuntu – which is translated different ways but essentially means a connection with humanity. It is sometimes expressed in the statement: “I am because we are.” That phrase underscores the sentiment that you and me can’t be divorced from one another.
In a recent speech at BYU, Dr. Jenet Erickson shared research and insights about the connection between identity and relationships. She stated, “Though our culture may tell us otherwise, we are not designed for self-actualized, pleasure-seeking autonomy. We are deeply relational beings, designed not for independence, but for radical dependence and connection.”
As much as we would like to be strictly autonomous and separate individuals, there seems to be a fundamental law in the universe that all things exist in, and are defined by, relationships.
Even modern physics is emphasizing the importance of relationship in identifying particles and processes. John Horgan, a science journalist, wrote a piece last year entitled: Is There a Thing, or a Relationship between Things, at the Bottom of Things? In his article he explores the notion, “that at the heart of reality there are at least two things doing something to each other. In other words, there is an interaction, a relationship.” He highlights assertions from physicist Carlo Rovelli who said that “things only exist in relation to other things.”
Even at the level of particles, quarks, and neutrons we find not isolated entities, but relationships which define.
To Know Thyself, Know Thy Relationships
On the ancient Temple of Apollo at Delphi is inscribed the Greek maxim “Know thyself.” Unfortunately, this philosophical injunction didn’t provide instructions on how to go about knowing oneself. If our identity is intertwined with our relationships, however, it seems that at least one way to gain some self-knowledge is to survey the relational landscape of our lives.
Dr. Jenet Erickson emphasized this point in stating, “It is in connecting with another that we begin to know who we are.”
But what relationships should we explore to learn about ourselves?
I’ve been working on a framework to help me simplify what is meaningful and important in life. The name of my private practice comes from that framework. The Four Relationships that I’ve based my therapy on give some guidance for meaningful starting points in self-exploration.
Relationship with Self
Relationships with Significant Others
Relationships with Society
Relationships with Something Bigger
You can read more about these relationships on my website. For this article though I want to briefly highlight a few examples of we can learn about our identity within each of these relationships.
Relationship with Self
In my last article I discussed five aspects of the self and questions for developing a better self-understanding. The answers to those questions can also point to various physical, mental, emotional, relational, or spiritual identities. Our bodies can go from too fab to too much flab with decreased life activity. With increased age we may remember less facts but be more prone to wisdom. The emotional reactivity of youth often gives way to a more tempered approach to life. Time, age, development can all shift our individual identities.
Relationships with Significant Others
Identities with significant others can be varied and complex. Imagine a large circle with your name in the middle of it. Now think of the people you feel closest to in your life and mentally put their names close to yours. Next, think of other fairly close people from different aspects of your life and mentally put their names a little further out from yours. As you look at each of the names you’ve listed, you should be able to start labeling certain identities in relation to those people: Husband, Mother, Son, Confidante, Lover, Soulmate, Listener, his Ride or Die, her BFF. Those relationships aren’t trivial. They inform our thoughts, feelings, and actions on a daily basis.
Relationships with Society
Identities in society can get tricky. Over the past couple decades as we’ve wrestled with identity politics, how one identifies, how one is identified, and the gap between those two have created intense friction. That friction may inform parts of one’s identify. Tackling societal identity may be a topic of a future blog post, but for now, it may be helpful to focus on roles, routines, and rituals.
What roles do you play outside your group of significant others? Are you on the PTA? Do you coach a kids’ sports team? Are you the office coffee runner? Are you a lone voice of appreciating diversity within your organization? Do people consider you the neighborhood Karen? Your roles inform your identity.
The routines of your life may be another source of relational information. Are you the first to get up in the morning? Do you run carpool for kids? Do you regularly check and post to social media? Do you need to check the news each day to get a sense of the world? Our relational routines inform broader identities.
Rituals tend to be more meaningful than routines. They carry some deeper purpose in our lives. Are you a congregant at a local church? Do you find joy in taking an evening walk with your dog? Do you make time for talking with a friend or child each day? The cherished rituals we carry out in society can tell us a lot about what we value.
Relationships with Something Bigger
The connections we have to overarching beliefs, values, entities, and causes also contribute to our identities. Caring for the homeless, the lonely, or those on the margins of society might indicate a higher purpose to your life. Involvement in political issues and campaigns can promote an identity of caring community member or being branded a nut job. Giving time or money to specific organizations or causes speaks to a philanthropic aspect to your identity. One’s relationship with deity may provide personal guidance and life direction.
When we look at our relationships we come to get a clearer sense of who we are.
So What?
Okay. I get it - relationships inform identity. So what?
If we really buy into this idea we come to a few important conclusions. First, who you are and what you do matter not only to yourself but to others. Others' identities are defined in relation to you.
Second, on scales small and large, what you do impacts broader relationships. Driving at ridiculous speeds on a racetrack can get you a fan base and a sponsorship for your talents. Driving at ridiculous speeds on the freeway can get you the finger and a hefty speeding ticket. You can become an icon or an idiot or broader society.
Third, when we appreciate our relational identities, we teach the next generation that who they are and what they do is connected to things far bigger than themselves. We can’t choose all our relationships, but we can choose some of them and live our best in as many of them as possible to shape our world for good.
Follow my Facebook or Instagram pages and share this content with those whose relationships matter most to you.
Comments