Identity and the Passage of Time

This week I’ve been reflecting on the concept of identity and how identity changes over time. Today I thought I’d share where that reflection has taken me so far.

When a person’s identity begins is a philosophical and religious question on which people may disagree. Does identity begin before conception, at conception, or at birth? I don’t intend to stray too far into that minefield, though I imagine we could all agree that genetics play an important role, and the genes that help define us are present at the earliest of stages.

But the environmental factors are more readily perceived. In early childhood, our identity is influenced primarily by family - by a parent’s nurturing, by a sibling’s companionship, by an extended family’s involvement in our lives. In some cases, one or more custodians may substitute for family, but their influence in our early years may be just as great.

In early and mid-adolescence, identity is shaped by our need to fit in with our peers. We try on different personas and different groups until we find the ones that fit, the places where we are accepted. Finding one’s identity in our teenage years is an exercise of self-discovery within an often volatile social context.

In late adolescence, anticipating the need to become financially self-sufficient, we map our identities to the outside world. We begin to search for and eventually adopt an identity built around our chosen fields. If we marry, and especially if we have children, we take on a new identity, shaped by family like our first identity, but assuming a markedly different role.

Not only is our identity multi-faceted; it also has multiple derivations. Some of our identity we inherit. Our race, ethnicity, and nationality, our parents’ religion (if they had one), our socio-economic class, our genetic makeup – we receive these identities from our forebears. As we mature, we begin to construct and deconstruct our own identities. We may abandon our inherited religion or adopt a different one. We may choose a lifestyle, a field of study, a career, a life partner. Every choice we make adds a new dimension to our identity.

In recent years, we have learned to talk about identity in new ways. The word “identify” has taken on a whole new meaning. We used to identify a person in a lineup, a writer’s handwriting, an object belonging to a friend, the species of a bird, the country associated with a flag. “Identify” was an action we took with respect to something outside ourselves. Now, it also is a way we choose to reveal ourselves to others. I identify as a heterosexual Italian-American male. Others may identify with selections from a wide palette of genders and sexual-orientations. We may choose to reveal something about those identities through the pronouns we display on our Zoom screens, a choice that for most of us was unimaginable, both culturally and technologically, just a few years ago.

Once we settle into our identities, we tend to stay there. But what happens when a change in circumstances or the sheer passage of time alters them? A middle-aged couple who divorce must adjust to a change in their identities and, to some extent, redefine themselves. The onset of chronic illness or disability can radically alter the identity of someone who had led an active life and can no longer work in the job they were trained for. As our parents age and lose their independence, we may take on the identity of caregiver, the child who tries to make the world safe or at least more comfortable for the now-dependent father or mother.

For a person of my vintage, the prospect of retirement may be the next significant identity disrupter, and is the reason that the concept of identity is so front of mind for me these days. I recently announced my plan to retire from law firm practice at the end of this year. I am not entirely leaving the field of law. Among other possible law-related pursuits, I have signed up for a new volunteer role with the American Bar Association, will likely continue to teach as an adjunct professor of law (a new identity I assumed this year), and plan to continue to write about legal topics in my area of specialty.

Because my public and private identity has been centered for so long on the practice of law, though, leaving law firm practice will mark a major change. Yet I view the change as an opportunity to reclaim other identities that have taken a back seat to my career for all these years, and to pursue the other facets of my identity that I hope to have more time for – among them, reader, writer, musician, podcaster (another new one), friend, helper, and perhaps most important, person of faith. (Yes, husband and father are among my identities too, but unlike the others, they have never taken a back seat to my professional identity.)

I am finding as I contemplate this next chapter that these identities I had known as a young man are still present. I have always defined myself as a reader, and I still love to read. I have always defined myself as a writer, and I still love to write. I have always defined myself as a musician and a lover of music, and I still rely on music to get me through each day. I have always defined myself as a friend and helper, and I still care about my friends and find meaning in service. I have always defined myself as a Christian, and I still depend on my faith. I don’t profess to be particularly good at any of these things, but I am excited at the prospect of re-focusing on the identities that I have long subordinated to the identity associated with the way I chose to earn a living.

For me, and I imagine for other near-retirees, all of this discussion about recalibrating our identities is really just another way of saying we want to rebalance how we spend our time. It’s a letting go of one, quite dominant set of demands on our time and an embracing of others.

One of my favorite religious writers, Richard Rohr, emphasizes the importance of letting go. When we let go of the behaviors, biases, and identities that tie us down, as one of his books explains, we fall, but it is a fall upwards. That letting go, he holds, is the essence of Jesus’ teaching and example (and, Rohr adds, exactly the opposite of much of what passes for Christianity today). Letting go, according to Rohr, can lead us to our true selves. And if it doesn’t get us all the way there, at least it can get us closer.

In his poem “Little Gidding,” T.S. Eliot wrote:

We shall not cease from exploration

And the end of all our exploring

Will be to arrive where we started

And know the place for the first time.

Retirement, one of life’s most significant forms of letting go, need not mark the end of our exploring, but it does get us that much closer to where we started. I am beyond excited to begin the journey home.