I Identify As...: Why Feelings Don’t Define You

When I was kid I loved the anime Dragon Ball Z and I wanted to be Goku. I would imitate all of Goku’s moves: the famous Kamehameha, the intense squats, the muscle flexing, and the yelling. I genuinely believed that if I tried hard enough—if I believed strongly enough—I could become a Super Saiyan.

But no matter how loud I shouted or how intensely I believed, I couldn’t become Goku. It didn’t matter how much I wanted it. It's impossible to become a fictional character.

That childhood experience taught me something powerful that I’ve carried into adulthood: desire does not determine identity.

Which leads me to point #1, you are not your feelings and thoughts.

Feelings and thoughts are fleeting, they come during one season of our lives and they go away in another season. They never stick around forever.

They trick us in believing we are, or can be people that we clearly can't become based on all innate and external evidence. Feelings, desire and thoughts don’t equate to reality. Yet culture often tells us to define ourselves by our inner world: “If you feel it, it must be true.” Scripture says “The heart is deceitful above all things and beyond cure. Who can understand it?” (Jeremiah 17:9)

#2, You are not fully who you say you are or who others say you are.

Every one of us know ourselves only partially. None of us actually know ourselves completely. Same with how others perceive us, they at best could perhaps accurately describe a part of us, but not our entire being.

However, the combination of what we do know about ourselves and how various people describe us do lead us to gain a better understanding of who we really are.

#3, You are a combination of your behaviour, personality and accomplishments.

Being a parent for the first time to a newborn is hard and a life changer. At times the baby can drive

new parents crazy. New moms have told me there have been times in the middle of the night they want

to just throw their baby out the window because the baby keeps waking up crying.

And yet, despite those overwhelming emotions, these same mothers choose to love, to soothe, to show up again and again. That choice—not the feeling—reveals who they are.

Our identity is often reflected in what we choose when it’s hardest to choose well. In how we love when we don’t feel loving. In how we serve when we’re empty. In the good we pursue when no one’s watching.

#4, You are who you are.

A part of your identity is your inherent biological form and features from birth. For example, If you have

male genitals and both of your parents are of British ancestry, then yes you’re a British male, no matter how you may feel about that fact.

You may have interests and inclinations that according to society is not what people of your race and

sex should have, but that doesn't mean you are in the wrong body and that you need to change your

physical appearance and body to fit society's mould. What it may mean instead is that society's definition of what it

of what it means to be your race and sex is wrong.

Society has misled you in understanding what it means to be born of a particular race and sex, and has

tricked you in thinking you need to change youself to fit its label.

You are fearfully and wonderfully made. God did not make a mistake in how you were made outwardly

and inwardly. Never forget that. 

You and I don’t need to change ourselves to fit the stereotypes of society. You and I need to changesociety's understanding of what it means to be people like you and me.