Identity is very important in today’s society.  Identity sets us apart from everyone else, and makes us our own person.  It makes us different.  However, it seems as though everyone’s identities are becoming everyone else’s and no one seems to have their own anymore.  Differences seem to be thought of as a bad thing, and being the same is now a must, so now people are trying more and more to be like each other and not setting themselves apart from the crowd.  If you are different from everyone else you are practically shunned and ridiculed because of it, not praised for standing out and being yourself.  To me, I would rather be myself and not be like everyone else.  I would rather stand out, and be my own person, not be everyone else’s person.  I do not want to be recognized as someone else, I want to be recognized as me.  I have my own identity and I am proud of it.  My values, passions, strengths and weaknesses are what make my identity.

Values and passions influence identity greatly.  I value my friendships the most of all.  Without my friends I do not know how I would be able to get through each day.  I turn to my friends for support, laughs, and basically just to be able to keep my sanity.  I value my morals too.  Without my morals I would not have very much pride in myself, and would not be able to make good decisions to keep me on the right path I would want to be on in life.  I do not smoke or drink alcohol, those morals help to keep me out of any trouble that those things can bring in a teenage life, or life in general.  Passions are also very important, and I am very passionate about writing, music and art.  Those are all my outlets when I get frustrated, upset, or excited about something.  I write poetry to get out my emotions while listening to music to help sort everything out.  Reading is also my passion. I love to read books that make me think, and that teaches me a lesson about something.  My values and passions are important to me for identifying who I am to myself.

My strengths are important in helping figuring out who I am.  I am very understanding, and am pretty good at putting myself into other people’s shoes.  I can think of how I would feel in their situation and try and assess as to what could be done in the situation.  I like to try and help people and give advice if I can and if they would like help.  I am a very sympathetic person and care a lot about others, even if I don’t know them very well, I love to listen to them and try to help in any way I can.  By being able to listen and help people, I have befriended a lot of the friends I have now.  By just being there for them on some random day that happened to come up, I became friends with them and have been friends with them for months, maybe even years now, and we have not been closer.  I am also very imaginative and creative, and because of this I am highly interested in writing and photography.  I love art in general and would love a career in the field some day.

Although I am fairly comfortable with my identity, I do have some parts of myself that need some improvement that I am uncomfortable with.  I come across as being extroverted and very comfortable with myself in the area of not caring what people think of who I am; however, as I am that, I am also very introverted and become very nervous about who I come across as when I am in big groups of people when I am not surrounded by friends or people I know.  This part of me needs to be worked on a great deal, and I have been working on this a lot.  I went to a leadership camp this summer for two days for band, and while I was there I decided that it was also going to be to try and help me with more than just band.  I also try and go out more without friends, by going to the mall alone, and going to parties without a friend driving me or without a friend accompanying me.  I am slowly becoming more and more comfortable with myself as a person alone than being a person as a group.  This is a good thing for when I go to college and will have to leave all my friends and start over.  I will not have all my friends there with me, and will have to make friends for myself.  Before, when I was afraid to be myself around groups of others, they did not know who I really was and would not try to be friends with a seemingly shy girl, so I did not make friends very easily.  Now that I can make friends more easily, and have been able to make friends more easily the last few years, I will be able to make friends more easily in the future.

My values, passions, strengths, and weaknesses make my identity and who I am.  Identity is a major part of everyone’s life, and is very important in society.  Identity makes people who they are, and points out who they are to everyone around them.  If everyone lived up to everyone else’s standards the whole world would be the same and everyone would not be different.  The world would be a boring place if everyone’s identity were the same.  We all have our own values, passions, strengths, and weaknesses, and they make us who we are.  They give us our identities.  Our identities are our own, be proud of it.