The search for an identity, apart from one associated with your convictions and principles, is shallow -- relative at best.
The problem with this quest is that it will bring you no...what is the word? Absolution. The human race's history is nothing but deja vu ad nauseum. Times change but we don't. A negative way of looking at progress is that it is nothing more than the discovery or invention of new tools and techniques for committing new follies that fit the ages.
Our aspirations, our ambitions, our ideas, our goals never really change. We just adapt our manifestation of them according to the era. Half a millennium ago, "Colonization" was the word; 500 years later you refer to it as "Globalization". Only the lexicon has changed, the meanings within have not. Barbaric wars between armies facing each other have been replaced by high-tech weapons in which the opponents simply don't see each others faces -- remote controlled destruction. The agrarian-based feudal system has given way to industrial and commercial capitalism. Three decades ago, letting your hair down and wearing trousers was in. Two decades ago, covering up was the order of the day. Now jeans and nice hair-dos are back in style again.
Don't confuse welfare with political correctness. Torture is politically incorrect; creative information extraction techniques are in vogue.
The reason I find the search for an identity shallow is because everything around me is constantly changing. I have no reference point per se that allows me to seek and claim an identity. Take our relations with our arch-enemy (India) for example. For half a century we had clearly drawn battle lines and we knew everything there was to know about "us vs. them." There were no gray areas. Suddenly in a few blinks, loyalties have shifted; priorities are realigned with the advent of the new millennium in the face of a mercurial globo-political system. Yesterday's enemies are today's friends and more ironically, people whom we were actively supporting for decades are suddenly persona non grata, the hunted. Who's to say whether we were right then and wrong now, or wrong then and right now -- or more so -- right then and right now, or wrong then and also wrong now?
How many people do you think sought identities in those circumstances? How many people do you think thought they knew which side of the line they were on? Where do you think they stand today? Or take our-Western neighbor for example: Afghanistan. The very government that our establishment nurtured and put into place over years has been dismantled and is being hunted down and wiped out by the very same establishment, because it is the need of the hour. What a morbid irony! Yesterday's heroes are now today's villains.
This picture that I have painted was over a span of -- what? A few decades? Now let me step back and give you a wider view, over centuries and millennia. Every few hundred years, nations will rise and fall, borders will be redrawn again and again, civilizations will come and go, sworn blood enemies will become indispensable allies, and long-standing comrades will become victims, empires will come into existence and perish. Wars will be fought, peaces will be made. Constitutions and all man-made laws are mere tools of convenience that allow systems to be put into place that serve the needs of the hour. Place no faith or belief in any constitution, except The One by God, because ours will change in the blink of an eye. Concepts like "liberties", "freedom", "rights", "justice", "sovereignty" as defined by any human being or system can be changed (or the word is "twisted" to indicate its vile implications) the moment it goes against the group in power, the establishment. This is our history-immemorial, in a nutshell.
In such circumstances, don't try to be a hero, don't take sides, and don't try to unnecessarily find who you are. Don't try to identify yourself with anything, any cause, any group, any system, that is not within your control to define. Because the day it changes, there's no telling where you will end up and you will end up questioning your own beliefs. You may be all the better for it --or you may suffer for it.
Either way at the end of the day you will be Judged and remembered by your convictions and principles and how you lived your life therein. Everything else is relative.
Stargazer
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