"Research shows that the more elements make up your identity, the less threatening it is when any one element is threatened." --Gretchen Rubin, author of
The Happiness Project
Huh. I am currently reading Gretchen Rubin's book The Happiness Project, a book that I picked up in JFK while waiting for my flight to California on Christmas Eve. It has a big yellow circle on the front informing me that it was #1 on the New York Times' bestseller list, and who doesn't love to read about Happiness? It reminded me a lot of the course I took in my last semester of undergrad, "The Science of Happiness." How can we incorporate more happiness practices and states of being into our lives? With 2012 fast approaching, it felt appropriate to read about one woman's yearlong exploration of theories and practices in Happiness.
That said, this sentence ("research shows...") made me put down the book and think. I've been on board with Gretchen up until this last paragraph on page 78. I am not sure that I agree. Maybe it's the mixed-baby complex that's balking. My best friend and I often talk about the infuriating inferiority complex that many mixed souls experience by never feeling "enough" of any culture, of any race, of any complexion, of any identity. An ex-partner told me once that he is not attracted to White women. I'm not sure if my eyes darkened or my lips curved downward, or if he just realized the hurtfulness and inaccuracy of his statement, but he quickly backpedaled. "I mean, unless I don't know at first that they're White." A challenge to one part of our identities is very threatening, because it assumes that one facet of our identity can be easily extracted from another. The fact that this man was attracted to the idea of who he thought I was initially, and not the reality of who I am, fundamentally threatened me. For this reason, I try to use the term "mixed" over terms like "biracial" or "half." People can not be neatly divided into two (or more) parts, separated out, one part removed from the other. We are all mixed up.
Maybe it's the wanderluster in me that feels offended by this assertion. I have been living in New York City for the past 5 years of my life, traveling the world in my free time and periodically returning to my home base in Oakland, California. Some of my best friends in NY are from the East Coast, and it's a weekly ritual to be told just how "California" I am. They constantly remind me that I am too friendly, too bubbly, too optimistic, too hippie-ish, and so on to ever be confused for a New Yorker. Then I come home and listen to exclamations over how colored I am by New York swag. (Can you tell how obsessed I am with both Cali and NY?) A threat to either identity sends me reeling into confusion and identity crises. I carry the best and worst of both places with me every day, everywhere I go, no matter where I am. A threat to either is a threat to both, and a threat to my core.
Then there's the classed aspect of my identity. Growing up middle class in a working class city, in a working class neighborhood, then moving to the opposite coast to attend an elitist private university, and ending up in my current position, teaching kindergarten public special education in the Bronx has sculpted my class consciousness and identity in a profound way. A threat to any part of that experience is a threat to it all. My world orientation is a combination of all of these elements and experiences. And class cannot be extracted from place, which can not be extracted from race.
Maybe this is a blog post about my own insecurities. And I am okay with that. At the end of the day, the more elements make up my identity, the more dynamic and evolving I am. I like to think that I am a multi-faceted person. My friends tell me I am so multi-faceted that I am elusive, and do not always present all aspects of myself to the world. I am working on that as we move into 2012. Still, I am moving with an acute awareness, thanks to Ms. Rubin, that every part of my identity is inextricably linked to the others. I roll around the world today a compilation of all of the experiences--good, bad, ugly, beautiful, conscious, subconscious--that I have been a part of thus far. I can handle the threats that may come, but I do not separate them. I process and feel them deeply, because a threat to one aspect of who I am is a threat to my essence. I am moving into the new year with a deep love and respect for every element of my identity, and, more importantly, with a deep love and appreciation for the messy, unbreakable relationships these elements have with one another.
