Essay:

A feeling. A warm feeling. Mainly towards my lower body. The glare of the sun shields the lower half of my body, as the escaping darkness of the room fleets from the oncoming forces from light. Altogether, the shades are ripped open. The glare overtakes the room, as the golden sun shines on the disarranged items.

“おはよう、サムーくん！” (Ohayou, Samu-kun!; Good morning, Sam!) A voice tore through the silence, exactly the same way that the sun tore through my seemingly ransacked bedroom. Books tossed, animal hair on the ground, a tan, illicit fluid dripping from the pipes of my bedroom, and onto my clothes in the closet. An indistinguishable mess.

“What are you still doing in bed, man? We have an event today! Don't tell me you forgot?”

“I did. I’m sorry. What time is it?”, I asked.

“11:37”

“Oh, shit. I’ll go into the bathroom now, then.”

Snatching the blanket from the cover of the bed, I jumped off the bed frame and scurried to the door. Long, rather fake nails dug into my skin as she attempted to reach for my shirt collar. I jumped back, the blanket flying forward from my abrupt pause of motion. I turn to see her pale face. With one hand digging into the skin covering my neck, her other hand clutched a half-drunken can of 仲介 (chuchai; fruit-flavored, alcoholic drinks). I tried not to face her, scared of what might erupt from her alcoholic-fused nature.

Alcohol was always a driving factor for our family, and the inducer of all the arguments that spurred out of control in our home. Casablanca, Choukachou, Chibuku, Ibwatu, Happoshu (発泡酒), Sake (酒), and Umeshu (梅酒). These names became more commonly spoken than the names of those who lived with us. A “brewer” which uprooted more problems in our family with every sip someone took, alcohol took its place as “the one who calls the ‘shots’”.

“You should try and speak your native tongue with me. And your parents, toooo. You can’t try and hide yourself in an abyss, which we can consider your skin.”, she said, her voice slurring with every sentence exiting her mouth

Thinking about a time when I would converse with both parents in two separate languages came to show that I wasn’t in touch with my roots as much as I used to. Hearing heavy, throat-exerted “gua”’s form the African dialects, Gio and Mano, and the eerie, sharp ringing of “違うよ” (chigau-yo; wrong), heard from all the way from downstairs in the basement, so we can't hear the arguments shifting from one race to another.

I began to observe the hand on my shirt. It was pale. Very pale. Even more pale than someone on their deathbed. The contrast found between her skin and mine would give the term “checkers” a run for its money. I grab her hand and hold it tight, trying not to let go. This is family.

This is the difference between the two sides of the family. This is…

“...What I should be.”, I muttered to myself.

My cousin snatched her hand away and shoved me into the bathroom.

“Stop talking about ‘what you should be’, before I ‘should be’ you into next week!”

The door slammed behind me, and I was left with the confusion of her last statement. I grabbed my towel and turned on the hot water. Diving into the bath, I began to ponder my own existence, and if I would ever find a crossroad like that again. Would I ever find a comparison like this outside my own family tree? Would the term “race” even appear to be something that is pinned on me for only one specific group?

“Love has no barriers, I guess. Nothing can separate two people from one another. That’s why I’m here. That’s why we’re all here.”

I sunk into the scalding water held in the fiberglass covered bathtub, the same way I would hide myself behind the representation of my personality, my way of speech, and my seeming “first impression”. My own skin would speak for me, and even write my stories.

The thoughts of future achievements with life taking place in the United States, or “The American Dream” has been different for multiple members of my family ever since they were bonded together by marriage, and even before that. There was never a certain  degree of agreement between the two, and it only brought about more flaws and cracks in the family. Someone was always right, and someone was always wrong. And when you were considered “right”, then you molded the family into what you wanted. An empire of truths and lies were forged right before our eyes. Well, maybe below them. 2 floors below them. As the smell of alcohol rose through the house, the children fled to the top floor, hoping to survive another night in the endless battle of the “right vs. wrong” household. The house becoming a checker board. Spotting the different colored pieces across the board, confused as to what their correlation is with one another.

¨You shouldn't wear high heels because you're already really tall, you're going to make everyone else look so short. ¨

¨ You think so, I don´t wanna look super huge or tower over anyone.¨

¨ Yeah you're gonna look like a jolly green giant in them, just wear flats or sneakers.¨

I was 12 years old and my best friend Imani and I were trying to figure out what we were going to wear to our 7th grade school dance. It was my very first school dance and I wanted to look perfect. I had settled on wearing a dress with heels until Imani reminded me of my height. I began to feel uncomfortable being tall and I started to do and wear things that prevented me from looking any taller than I already was including wearing heels. I ended up wearing flats that night even though I really wanted to wear heels. I let someone else impact how I felt about myself and make me feel awkward about something that I can´t help. I was unknowingly lowering my own confidence so that everyone else around me could be comfortable.   

       People don't realize the ways that influential society doesn't allow us to be our true selves. We cannot completely be ourselves in this world without upsetting some people. Whether we realize it or not we are always trying to get the approval of others. We long for acceptance and equality from others before we understand it within ourselves. We are constantly unconsciously trying to please others. This makes the priorities in society very questionable.

    Who or what you choose to be is your identity. According to Siimon Reynolds of Forbes “Identity affects how you dress., what wages you ask for or what prices you charge your clients. It even affects how much money you save or spend.¨  We are asked at a very young age who we are and who we are going to be in this world that will make us successful in life. Celebrity Josh Radnor says ¨When I taste success that's when i'll be happy¨.  One does not truly know their identity and who they want to be when from birth we have each been influenced by everything we see and hear around us. In our communities we see things negative and positive that affect overall who we become. Other people shape our identities before we do because of the effect people have over each other. People change people and that’s something that will never change in the world. We will always be taught,  influenced or inspired by something we witness from another person. We all try to fit into the norms of society in order to seek approval from others. We seem to seek approval from other people before we seek it from ourselves. I never understood why this was. We value other people's opinions over our own. We give up who we really are and lose apart of our identities from doing this. We prioritize fitting in and conformity over self-love, acceptance and individuality. I wonder what age it is that you lose the satisfaction of being yourself and not caring what other people have to think of you over what you think of yourself.

Not everyone follows this. There are people out there who don't care about the approval of others or society. They go against the ordinary and do as they please. “To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment.”   Ralph Waldo Emerson said that. Some people like the risk of not fitting in and being unique. This is a risk that we should all take. I envy people who don't care about what other people think or say about them and are content with being themselves. A lot of people don´t think like this because in our community we value popularity and looking cool as opposed to having our own opinions and beliefs. Society has ruined us as people by placing expectations on us to have and like things.  We no longer have our own identities.

We let society pick our identities apart and tell us that they aren't normal, beautiful, or amazing when we shouldn´t. You are the only one who lives your life so according to Siimon Reynolds ¨you might as well take control of the process and visualise exactly what you want ”. It´s not fair for you to not be the person you want to be and are supposed to be. Be yourself and love yourself.

“Money is a tool. Used properly it makes something beautiful; used wrong, it makes a mess.” We are so used to thinking that money can just get us anything that we want to possess in life which can lead us to obsess over it. Money is a concept that can be used to get through things and achieve a part of our goals. But, it does not necessarily mean that it can buy us joy in life. Through money, we can have material things to satisfy our needs and wants. It is also something that we can rely on to get through different situations in life. However, it can be very difficult to handle if we don’t use it wisely. For example, a person who has an abundance of money may abuse its value by spending heavily on material things, but later in life, this person regrets how he/she acted because of how it affected him/her physically, emotionally, and mentally. The thought of money can be very satisfying because it makes us wonder about all the possibilities that we can do with it in life. Money is not just something that is made out of paper or copper but, it can affect many of us in different ways because of its importance and value in society.

“The bottom line: money appears to have both positive and negative effects on our behavior. On the one hand, it encourages self-sufficiency and hard work; but on the other, it discourages some positive social interaction.”  Money can be a very problematic thing if we do not handle it correctly. Growing up, my mom hardly exposed my sister and I to money. We would get small amounts of money here and there for our allowance usually in the morning before we leave for school. She would reach for her purse and hand us over the crumpled 100 Peso bill which equivalents to 2 US Dollars. At the time, that was big for me especially not really having to buy anything because I packed my own lunch and I was being dropped off and picked up to and from my elementary school. I didn’t get an allowance everyday, only when my mom asks me if I needed some money for food or a school project. Growing up, I was always too shy to ask my mom for money because I always waited for her signal. But, I am glad that this was a consistent act because over the years I realized how important it is to work hard for your own money and how it can help you grow as a person if you’re handling your own money.

Through my childhood experiences, I grew up hearing that “money doesn’t grow on trees.” This has been a well-known saying that everyone is familiar with. I always heard this saying growing up and I still believe it is true. Money isn’t easy to have as it comes and goes, therefore, it needs to be used wisely. My mom always taught my sister and I to be smart when it comes to handling our money so we can be financially stable later in life. I knew that this was a good advice that I can always carry on to prepare me for adulthood and life, in general. Money can always make great things to happen, but we have to be wise about it because it can either make us or break us. Sources:

Castillo, Stephanie, and Stephanie Castillo Stephanie Is an Avid Writer, Runner, and Snacker, Though Not at the Same Time. Read More. "The Mental Effects Of Money." Medical Daily. N.p., 27 Feb. 2015. Web. 18 Jan. 2017.

Gregoire, Carolyn. "How Money Changes The Way We Think And Behave." The Huffington Post. TheHuffingtonPost.com, n.d. Web. 18 Jan. 2017.

As a kid, I built people from numbers. From lists and characteristics that I believed would somehow craft a real person to bring life to my stories. I thought that knowing how a character took their coffee or what their favorite movie was would build me a real personality. Looking back on that, I almost laugh. Laugh at how short I fell from creating a real person. What I was scratching out with my ballpoint pen was a lifeless replication of the intricacies of humanity, a paper person that couldn’t even begin to comprehend the complexities of reality. Yet, what I laughed at is now an ever present and inescapable factor of our online world. Social media and the increased availability of brisk online communication have caused us to relinquish our authenticity and embrace the distortion of our personalities. We see social media as an advancement of culture and connection, but we ignore the effect it has on our personalities. We ignore the fact that so many users signed away their personality when they signed off on the swear of conformity hidden deep in terms and conditions. On social media, the mass of users have created an unspoken rulebook filled with expectations for every profile (Heitner). This hidden rulebook begins people’s journey towards the conformity and is the start of them adjusting themselves for the online community. Users start with tiny adjustments that they believe are impermanent and unimportant changes to fit in, but as time goes on and expectations grow, they change more extremely to continually receive that popular reception. Users get sucked into the popularity contest because of how incredibly evident it is online. Every second you’re on the program you see likes, follows, retweets and it begins to have this immense power over users, rather than prioritizing fun and community. Once people can see what gets the most attention, they begin to pursue those posts, activities, and events. They begin act not for themselves or their entertainment, but to get a leg up in a immaterial world. They calculate every part of their day and each post to ensure it adds exactly the right detail to their image. Elisabeth Camp argues that “Who [you are] is given by the story [you] tell” emphasizing how much power we have to alter and “better” ourselves online by being able to control what we story we tell and what character we allow people to see (Camp). Every time you scroll through someone’s feed, all that you see is the carefully curated characteristics and picturesque personality they want you to glimpse. It becomes a game to see who can become the most produced, but appear the most authentic. Social media embraces this suppression and illusion, and because of that it hurts their users as they fall prey to the game. They begin to lose their personality and integrity online, but eventually even in real life too because of the advanced tech of our phones. Our phones have become an ever present part of our life and they affect our personality immensely, illustrated by Sherry Turkle, “Our phones are not accessories, but psychologically potent devices that change not just what we do but who we are” (Turkle). As users check and log onto their phones constantly through the day, they begin to unconsciously bring their pattern of facades and lies with them even after they log off or shut their phones. They do this unconsciously, but also consciously as they see the success of their lies and begin to crave the success and false happiness they found online. Because of the positive reception and the increased time spent online today, as users wipe parts of their personalities away online, they can eventually reach a point where it’s nearly impossible to return to or ever retrieve themselves. What they were becomes a distant memory soaring away as they immerse themselves more and more into the binary of the digital world. All of these factors between the hidden rule book, the popularity contest, and constant conformity create the very same paper people that I myself used to build. Users log on one day, then another, and then every day. Each time losing a small part of themselves until they are fully paper and it’s impossible to return to who they were before. Digital literacy today is more than understanding the internet, but understanding who you are and how not to lose that. Digital literacy is about acknowledging both the strengths and the weaknesses of our’s and the digital world. We are not a world of paper people, we’re an incredibly complex world of diversity, disagreement, and depth and there is no follow, like, or retweet that should convince us to leave that behind.

Bibliography

Heitner, Devorah. "Rules for Social Media, Created by Kids." The New York Times, 5 Jan. 2017. Web. 18 Jan. 2017.

 <https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/05/well/family/the-unspoken-rules-kids-create-for-instagram.html>.

Jackson, Nicholas. "The American Identity According to Social Media." The Atlantic, 16 Aug. 2016. Web. 18 Jan. 2017. <http://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/08/infographic-the-american-identity-according-to-social-media/243687/>.

The Narrative Self. Dir. Elisabeth Camp. Perf. Elisabeth Camp. Wireless Philosophy. Youtube, 5 Feb. 2016. Web. 18 Jan. 2017. <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lcIqoN9oRgo>.

Turkle, Sherry. "Stop Googling. Let's Talk." Sunday Review. The New York Times, 26 Sept. 2016. Web. 18 Jan. 2017.      <https://www.nytimes.com/2015/09/27/opinion/sunday/stop-googling-lets-talk.html?_r=0>.

Identity is who you are. Belonging is wanting to be associated with a certain group. I believe a feeling of belonging is being with society as a whole, and someone belonging is them wanting to be with the rest of society. But can we fully belong to something? And if we do, is it to ourselves or society?

Society can and cannot co-exist with identity because that's what you are, rather than belonging to society. It can when you fit a standard in a certain belonging. For example, if you belong to a church. and the church is against homosexuality.  There was a boy named danny that belonged to a church in his neighborhood. He was cast aside by the church when he come out as gay, and didn't want to get “treated” for a mental disorder like the church suggested. “​Danny’s church would either recommend celibacy or reparative therapy—a widely discredited form of treatment that identifies homosexuality as a mental disorder with the goal of converting people to heterosexuality—to congregants who identified themselves as gay or lesbian.” Because Danny couldn’t fit into this type of society, he was shunned and cast aside because he classified as something different than the church's beliefs. Looking closely, it looks like if someone doesn’t agree with the rest of society, they will throw anyone who disagrees away. Danny fully belongs to himself, accepting his identity. Even though he does not belong to the church anymore.

A a referee that was openly gay faced a lot of criticism from people in society. He was harassed by a player from a team. The player was suspended but that did not erase the thought that there is still hate from others. “I’ve seen myself and not because of anything you did.” This ref believed in himself instead of what society thinks. He continued his job. He chose himself over society. Here, the worth of society is not valued. The Ref stuck with his identity and didn’t change himself from the criticism and harassment he received.

Anyone that is poor is unfortunate. Of course they don’t want to identify as being in the low class. But that’s where they belong. This world consists of people who want money, such as taxes for the government. When you are expected to pay money for something, but don’t have it, you are looked down upon. “ It’s the same type of problem poor people encounter every day, multiple times: The demands of the moment override the demands of the future, making that future harder to reach.” A poor person’s goal is to be able to have money like the middle class can, or even be rich. But people in society put pressure on these people to do better to achieve that goal. This is because they are already struggling with not having money, but now they are expected to pay things like everyone else even though they can’t. Belonging and identity co-exist here because this person identifies as poor (unfortunately), and they belong in the low class since they don’t have money.

American is one of the most proud countries in the world. We, unlike many, have patriotism. In which we are very serious and interested in our country's politics. But because of that, we look down on people who live in America and identify as something other than American. Olympic athletes were criticized for playing for other countries when they are American.“For an event that represents so much national pride, where victories or defeats live in lore for decades, many athletes will represent another country, either because of heritage or because it may be the only way they could compete in the games.” These competitors tried out for countries their heritage is from because they wanted to compete for their ancestors, or it was their only chance to compete in the Olympic. To make the American team is really hard, even if you are a powerful athlete. These athletes choose to identify as another country, since they have it in their blood. They belong to play for American some would think. But they identify for another country. For this, many Americans criticize them. “In the eyes of the athletes competing under the flag of a country that’s not home, they’re competing in the Olympic spirit as much as anyone else.” It is an honor to be in the Olympics. Athletes will take any chance they get to make it their. Therefore, Identity and belonging do not co-exist here.