Society likes boxes. They help us organise people into categories that feel familiar and understandable. We classify people by race, religion, nationality, language, profession, or culture.
These identities can provide belonging and help us make sense of ourselves and others. The difficulty arises when real people refuse to fit neatly into those boxes.
Reading Kwame Anthony Appiah and Jacqueline Scott has led me to think more deeply about this issue. Appiah argues that identities are shaped through social narratives and collective histories, but they are also interpreted and negotiated by individuals.
We inherit identities, yet we are not merely passive recipients of them. Scott takes this discussion further by describing what it feels like when society struggles to recognise the complexity of a person’s lived identity. Her distinction between public identity and lived subjectivity highlights the gap that can exist between how society sees us and how we understand ourselves.
What resonates most with me is the idea that identity is not fixed. We inherit certain identities through birth, family, language, culture, and community. Yet our understanding of those identities changes as we move through life. New experiences, new relationships, new ideas, and new questions all shape how we understand ourselves.
The person we are at twenty is rarely the same person we become at forty. That is why I see life itself is an adventure.
Every adventure changes the traveller. Every question explored, every assumption challenged, and every experience encountered leaves its mark on us. Identity is therefore not simply a destination we arrive at, but a journey of continual reflection and growth.
This does not mean abandoning our past. Rather, it means recognising that inherited identities are not frozen in time but they are living traditions that individuals interpret in different ways.
The challenge is not to force ourselves into pre-existing boxes, but to develop the confidence to understand who we are when those boxes no longer seem adequate.
In the end, identity may be less about fitting into a category and more about finding a way to bring all of ourselves into the world with honesty, curiosity, and integrity. After all, if life is an adventure and identity is one of the greatest adventures of all.
Further Reading
Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity (Princeton University Press, 2005). Especially Chapter 1, "The Ethics of Individuality."
Jacqueline Scott, "Toward a Place Where I Can Bring All of Me: Identity Formation and Philosophy" in Reframing the Practice of Philosophy: Bodies of Color, Bodies of Knowledge (SUNY Press, 2012).
Linda Martín Alcoff, Visible Identities: Race, Gender, and the Self (Oxford University Press, 2006). Discussed extensively in Scott's chapter.
This article forms part of my ongoing exploration of Humanism, identity, belonging, and the relationship between inherited traditions and personal self-understanding.
September 2026
