My Real Self: Reflections on identity in college and beyond
By: Jen Strickland
After saying goodbye to my parents at freshman convocation, I, like many of you, was immediately thrust into an orientation group and asked to give an account of myself to two professors and a handful of new peers. Internally, I didn’t handle that demand well. To be honest, I was terrified. It didn’t help that my eyes were still wet with tears and I had no clue what I wanted to major in.
I expected the feeling of disquietude that arose when attempting to answer those initial sweeping, life-defining questions (“who are you,” “where do you come from,” “what do you want in life?”) to dissipate and perhaps disappear altogether once I was settled: in a major, in a job, in marriage, and in motherhood. I was mistaken.
Nearly five years removed from my college graduation, and by all accounts “settled,” I’m happy to report that I’m no longer terrified. I do, however, still find myself occasionally thrown into situations where I must give an account of myself and my place in the world both to myself and others. Writing this article, I’ll admit, sent me into a small tizzy not entirely unlike my first days as a Hillsdale freshman; how do I define myself and what details should I share with you, O anonymous reader? What are the salient points of me? What is my “vibe” or aesthetic, my skills or expertise, the traits and idiosyncrasies that make me, me? Put plainly: Who am I?
I don’t think I’m alone in experiencing what I’ll call “mini identity crises” now and again. I think many women experience similar moments throughout their lives. The girl going off to college for the first time; the woman newly engaged, newly married, or newly pregnant; the brand-new empty-nester, the newly retired, the newly widowed; each stage of life offers time to reflect on one’s identity. It does feel as though mutability is the only true constant in this transitory life (as Shelly concludes in one of his poems: “Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow; / Nought may endure but Mutability.”) And if that’s true, how does one maintain a strong sense of self through each swirling and shifting new stage of life?
Yet maybe a “strong sense of self” ought not be the goal. Maybe, just maybe, it is because of an overly inwardly-focused mindset that I sometimes experience feelings of unsettledness when pondering my identity. To be clear, I am in no way arguing against the helpfulness of self-knowledge, inner examination, and the like. It matters, though—it is in fact paramount—that the starting point of one’s self-examination be rooted in someplace (or rather Someone) solid.
C.S. Lewis writes on this subject more eloquently and persuasively than I ever could in his famous work Mere Christianity. I agonized over which quotations to include and implore you to read the whole book, if you haven’t already. This bit comes from the last chapter titled “The New Man,” and it’s much more poignant within the context of the whole. Nevertheless, here we go:
“The more we get what we now call ‘ourselves’ out of the way and let Him take us over, the more truly ourselves we become. There is so much of Him that millions and millions of ‘little Christs,’ all different, will still be too few to express Him fully. He made them all. He invented—as an author invents characters in a novel—all the different men that you and I were intended to be. In that sense our real selves are all waiting for us in Him. […] Until you have given up your self to Him you will not have a real self. Sameness is to be found most among the most ‘natural’ men, not among those who surrender to Christ. How monotonously alike all the great tyrants and conquerors have been: how gloriously different are the saints.”
Those are words that inspire. But how does that knowledge, that our “real selves are waiting for us in Christ,” transform the deep and dark places of fear and anxiety that threaten to bubble up to the surface now and then in each of us?
Slowly. And that’s the one nugget of wisdom I am coming to learn, painfully slowly, it feels to me sometimes: that a saintly life, one joyfully conformed to the goodwill of God, takes a lifetime to achieve. And sometimes it even feels as though you might be moving backwards or drifting off. But here’s Lewis again:
“Look for yourself, and you will find in the long run only hatred, loneliness, despair, rage, ruin, and decay. But look for Christ and you will find Him, and with Him everything else thrown in.”
“I’m looking for Jesus,” is not necessarily a socially acceptable answer to questions that surface at parties, freshman convocations, first dates, or job interviews, but it is an answer (the answer!) that, by God’s grace, will quell the confused murmurs of a wandering heart like my own.
