Fit in and stand out! Some thoughts on identity

I’m going to let you in on a little secret—identity is a paradox (a statement that contradicts itself, yet somehow manages to be true). If you were to look it up in a psychology textbook, you would find the definition of identity is the interplay between two innate needs: 1.) the need to feel unique with one’s own sense of personal agency and value, and 2.) the need to feel belonging, connectedness and unity within a community. To be different, but the same.

I’d venture to say we each have at least one group in our lives that a part of us wishes we felt more accepted by, while another part of us is also proud for not falling directly into their stereotype. Beware the double standard created, urging—“Fit in and stand out!” It is nearly impossible to be fully content under this double standard because it does little to cultivate self-acceptance, belonging and authenticity. Instead, it turns identity into a competition of comparisons: “Be just like everyone else, but better.”

Comparison is the thief of happiness because it relies upon a hierarchy in which someone must be worse off in order for someone else to be better. It requires proofs and justifications for worthiness— turning us into human doings who must prove they are “enough” through achievement, as opposed to human beings who are worthy as they are.

So what does that actually mean beyond an abstract level? For me it means recognizing that my version of fun does not have to fall directly into the narrowly defined social construct of Duke’s “Work hard, Play hard” fun— that it’s okay to adopt some parts and not others. My version of fun doesn’t always look like going out and dancing on the Shooters bar (though you know I love those elevated surfaces). Sometimes it’s wine and "Game of Thrones" with my roommate. Sometimes it’s a Friday morning loop around the Washington Duke Inn trail with a friend. Sometimes it’s writing a poem and gaining the satisfaction of knowing I’ve put into words exactly what I’m feeling on that piece of paper. And sometimes it’s as simple as walking to class with my ear-buds in, listening to my favorite spoken word piece as the sun shines just right, like a blanket of kisses on my skin.

Notice those last two activities were solitary. I note this because there was a period of my Duke career where the fact that I enjoyed spending time by myself gave me a bit more anxiety than was due. I felt embarrassed for craving time alone every so often because I thought it would keep me from “doing college right." Knowing that, quite frankly, there was not a single piece of me interested in going out 5 nights a week, made me feel like I was failing to live up to the undergraduate experience I was “supposed” to want and how I was “supposed to be.”

For your information—there is no “supposed to be.” “Supposed to be” was not a standard I’d come to by my own terms, it was someone else’s standard I felt the need to impose upon myself. It was the standard of the dominant narrative, and I wanted to do it right. Wasn’t that how I’d gotten into Duke in the first place? Figuring out the rules, following the criteria needed to earn the A? Adapting to the expected standard and owning it?

Convincing myself that my own social expectations could be different from the “supposed to's” was hard because it felt like the equivalent of telling myself I needed to do well enough in class just to pass. And when have any of us really ever known how to do that? We are overachievers, and achieving often implies competition. I’d argue our achieving nature in academics often transfers to an achieving nature within the social scene, too. Going out becomes not just about letting loose and blowing off steam, but about showing face to accumulate social capital. This explains why “I haven’t seen you out in forever, where have you been?” can come across as a thinly-veiled “Don’t you know how to have fun, loser?” What makes you think that just because I wasn’t at Thursday night Devines, I wasn’t having a blast watching Mat Kearney at Cat’s Cradle or having a cookie-dough-eating, sweatpant-wearing heart-to-heart with my little? God forbid I was studying! Just because my version of fun does not fall into the "Wednesday: Shooters, Thursday: Devines, Friday: date function, Saturday: Shooters and Sunday: He's Not" routine doesn’t mean it doesn’t count.

And yet we still feel pressured to measure up to the same standard, a double standard trying to satisfy those two innate identity needs—to be different and the same. To do the things you love, but still do what everyone else expects you to do. To have your own voice, but not get dismissed by the status quo opinion. Trying to live up to this double standard is like having two lines to walk. The two lines are not one and the same. They may run close enough that we can keep a foot on each, but eventually one will sweep in a different direction and we will have to choose some sort of middle ground.