It’s one of the biggest questions we human beings—and especially teenagers—used to ask ourselves: “Who am I really?” It seems easy enough to begin with. You’ve got a face, name, and personality. But it is significantly more complicated than appearance. Philosophers have been trying to figure out themselves for thousands of years as to why it is you who turn into an individual, and the reasons are crazily complicated.
One of the earliest philosophers, John Locke, believed that individual identity is bound up with memory. You are the same person today that you were yesterday because you are able to remember what you did before, he argued. Your mind, your consciousness, and your memories form a consistent chain that make you up. Suppose your memories fade or even change? If identity is wrapped up with memory, then are we constantly becoming another person?
David Hume dissented. The self isn’t some kind of fixed thing to him. It is a collection of impressions, feeling, and ideas, a congeries of changing experiences. There is no stable place; we’re always in flux. This vision is hard to envision, but it allows us the freedom to be. If the self can’t be stabilized, then we can change, become, and remake ourselves.
Modern psychology rephrases these themes. You are what you are because of biology, culture, relationships, and your own free will. Peer pressure, family pressure, the social media, and even the mood swings of life will mold you into what you are. But philosophy comes into play and shows you that you’re not fully built by the external sources. Through reasoning, making intelligent choices, and listening to yourself, you positively build your identity.
Teenagers are under a lot of identity pressure. You’re constantly wondering: “Am I me on the internet as I am in real life?” or “Do I enjoy something because it’s actually me, or because others tell me that I would?” They are questions you must pose to yourself. They lead you to try and separate what of you is actual and what’s developed from outside pressure. Philosophical investigation strips away those layers and discovers that identity isn’t really the stable sort of thing, it is a process.
Existentialist philosophers like Jean-Paul Sartre are absolutely convinced that identity is something you build by doing it. You are what you’ve become. As opposed to things you are born with, or things you have no control over, it is what you choose that makes you who you are. Each decision—a tiny decision or a gigantic decision—is a statement of who you are and who you want to be. It’s thrilling and intimidating all at once: you get to make yourself up, but you get to re-make yourself too.
Self-awareness is also accepting contradictions. You are sure one way and less sure the other, a thinker in the head but a doer in the body. Identity is never ever a line; it is a mosaic of characteristics, experiences, and relationships. Philosophers remind us that doubt is not weakness but human. Accepting the fluidity of identity gives room for exploration, imagination, and growth.
And lastly, it’s not completing at the end of the road by asking yourself the question “Who am I?”, it’s building ongoing inquiry. Self-awareness is something you exercise and get better at with experience, choosing, and trial and error. By inquiring into your thoughts, actions, and values, you know yourself and learn to be in the world on purpose and with awareness.
The next time you find yourself wondering who you are, take this as an answer: identity is not where you’re headed, but where you arrive. You’re an amalgamation of action, memory, experience, ideas, and actions, but above all, you’re an agent obligated to fashion yourself. Bringing in that richness, you can claim your own thoughts and begin to untangle one of life’s biggest mysteries.