One’s identity, personality, and view of the world is what distinguishes them amongst others. My identity is shaped by my family and gender status, my personality consists of extroversion and overthinking, and my view of the world is in an optimistic feminist perspective.
To begin, identity plays a significant role in determining how I understand and experience the world. My identity is strongly impacted by my family and gender status. I come from a family that is very loving and consists of my parents, my older sisters, my grandmother, and myself. My family is the single most important influence in my life as they are always by my side through the good times and the bad times. With me being the youngest, my sisters and I share different responsibilities. However, since they are older, my sisters go to university, work, and to run their own personal errands. This means the responsibility originally given to them is now given to me as they aren’t home as much. I have many more obligations and am looked at differently by my parents even though I am the youngest person in my family. For example, recently it was my fathers birthday and we were having a party for him on the weekend. We invited all of our close family and friends to celebrate his birthday with us. This meant there was a lot of work to be done such as cleaning the house, ordering and beginning to prepare food, setting the table, putting out all of the chairs for seating, and overall making the house presentable and ready for a party. Normally my mother and sisters take care of this while I sleep or do minor chores. Anyhow, in this case, both of my sisters were at work and I was left with the responsibility of doing what they do. I woke up early and began cleaning right away which made me feel slightly irritated. I was in a very grumpy mood as I did not want to be doing this on a Saturday morning but later realized that these are some of the things that my family does almost every day. This is what will help me to gain skills for my future life and will prepare me to overcome any obstacles that come my way. When I am married, have my own house and kids, I will be thankful for the times my family allowed me to participate in these activities. My family status has had the largest impact on me in the real world. My next identity is gained from my gender status. I live in a traditional Indian household meaning gender was a controversial topic to be brought up. I believe girls should have the same rights and opportunities as boys in all aspects of our society. Many girls aren’t allowed to go to parties, stay out late at night, hang with friends, etc. Compared to my male cousins, I am not allowed to do many of the things they can. For example, every year the grade 11 and 12 students at my school have the chance to attend a trip to Montreal during the march break. I was very excited after hearing about this trip as I had only seen a small part of Montreal before. My male cousin was also interested in attending this trip and was able to do so just as he pleased. When it was my turn to ask my parents, I simply got told no. I asked why I wasn’t allowed to go and was told it is because I am a girl and he is a boy. This made me very angry because the boys and girls in my family got treated differently. Instead of keeping quiet, I chose to speak up about this lack of equality. My parents were very shocked to hear me speak up towards how I feel about being a girl in a traditional Indian household. Although I was fearful to speak my true mind because I did not want to get in trouble, I made it clear that this was unfair and girls are not inferior to boys in any way, nor should they have different amounts of freedom. This made my parents aware of the fact that females are just as capable of anything as males and that I should be able to attend this trip if I wanted to. Being a female in this society has taught me to stand my ground and to speak up for what is right. My gender status has shaped my identity to be the person I am today.
Furthermore, personality is composed of the traits you would use to describe yourself or others would use to describe you. Prior to completing many online quizzes and life experiences themselves, I have come to the realization that my personality has traits of extroversion. I am an extrovert meaning I am talkative, sociable, action-oriented, enthusiastic, friendly, and outgoing. An extrovert personality can be seen in me when I am spending time with my friends and family. I constantly find myself wanting to spend times with my friends and family as I feel energized by being around them and a sense of excitement when discussing with them. When given the chance, I prefer to talk to others instead of sitting alone with my thoughts. I enjoy being in social situations and often find myself seeking opportunities to engage with others. For example, in my grade 11 law class, my teacher had come up with a new seating plan. Since students who are friends with each other were not going to be seated next to each other, many people felt uncomfortable as to who they were going to be sitting with. My teacher assigned our seats and as expected, I did not know anyone at my table. I noticed there were signs of uneasiness and discomfort coming from the other individuals. Being the extrovert that I am, I quickly introduced myself and asked everyone at the table for their names to become familiar with them. By taking initiative in this situation it allowed for the individuals on my table to open up and feel more comfortable. We continued the course by conversing daily and becoming good friends. I believe my most dominant and positive personality trait is my extroversion. In contrast, a negative and challenging personality trait I possess is that I am an overthinker. This means that instead of acting and doing things, I am thinking too much by analyzing, commenting and repeating the same thoughts over and over again. Overthinking prevents me from taking action, consumes my energy, makes it harder for me to make decisions and makes me second guess my original instincts. I vividly remember moments where I am disappointed in myself because I tend to overthink and end up creating situations that would not be there to begin with. For example, this year in one of my classes, I did not do too well on a test. Although it was the beginning of the course and I had a lot of time to make up for it, I was not able to stop thinking about what would happen moving forward. I kept thinking if I would get a good mark in this course, if it would ruin my overall average, if it would ruin my future chances of going to university and many more unimportant things. I felt sad, downhearted, and at times, miserable. I was overthinking things that were of the least importance in my life at the moment and could easily be fixed. Due to this my self-esteem in the course felt low and I did not feel happy about myself. This also resulted in more bad tests or quizzes as I could not bring myself to think about the test but only think about unnecessary things. This negative trait of mine can be an issue in many obstacles that come my way and I hope to overcome it for my own betterment. Alongside my many positive traits, I do have some traits that challenge me and have shaped my personality to this day.
Lastly, everyone perceives the world in a different sense based on their social position and worldview. The way I perceive the world defines who I am as a person. I identify my social position as a part of the mainstream. My family comes from a well social-economic status which makes me a part of the mainstream society as I am given those privileges. To begin, the population of Indians in Canada has evidently grown throughout the years, accounting for roughly 1.4% of Canada’s population. This places us in the mainstream social position as it has become the social norm. There are many Indians that are dominating the community which I believe makes them a part of the three levels of hegemony. One reason for this is that the provincial elections that recently took place in Brampton consisted of mostly Indian candidates. This includes Raj Grewal, Jagmeet Singh, Navdeep Bains, Kamal Khera, and Vic Dhillon to name a few. Due to this, Indians have grown in the community and been placed in the statuses of hegemony. For example, where I live there are only people of Indian descent meaning it is uncommon to see someone from another ethnicity. There have been a couple of times where we’d see individuals, who are not Indian, walking in our area and we would instantly become surprised because it is quite rare to see them. At times like those, I believe the Indian community has grown to overcome the others. This would make us a part of the mainstream society as we have become a primary consideration in the community. In addition, the particular way I view the world is in optimistic feminist perspective. An optimist is someone who always finds the positive things in situations that are negative. It is someone who views the world in a hopeful and confident way focusing on what can be done instead of what should have been done. It is the tendency to believe, expect or hope that everything will turn out well. By being an optimistic feminist, I am able to live my life to the fullest and make the best out of any unpleasant situation. For example, one summer day I was wearing shorts and heading out with my friends. My grandmother stopped me and told me that they were too short and I was showing too much of my legs. Instead of agreeing with her and changing my clothes, I said that it was okay and I can wear what I myself feel comfortable in. Due to my optimistic feminist perspective, I chose to stay positive throughout the entire situation. This experience allowed me to understand that life is too short to be worrying about little things. As a girl, I should be able to dress how I want and always speak up about what I feel is right. In the future, I hope all men and women are able to enjoy the same rights and opportunities regarding all aspects of our society. This shows that I view the world from an optimistic feminist standpoint. My social position and worldview have defined my perspective on the world and who I have grown to become.
In conclusion, the many obstacles I have faced in my life are what influenced me to be the individual I am today. My identity is shaped by my family and gender status, my personality consists of extroversion and overthinking, and my view of the world is in an optimistic feminist perspective.