Article March 26, 1990 Issue

How do you identify yourself to yourself?

When we define ourselves by age, race, gender, income, education, we omit the one essential fact about ourselves.

Harriet Barry Schupp

A Friend and I were at a luncheon honoring fifty-year graduates of a women's college, listening as each one told a little about her life since leaving college. We soon began discussing how these graduates were different from women of younger generations and also how they were the same.

My friend then told me of her current research with students into the question of how they perceived themselves—or, as she put it, how they identified themselves to themselves. She said that some were inclined to define themselves more by their dispositions (moody, aggressive, cheerful) than, as the fifty-year graduates did, by their positions in the world (job, marital status, children). Then she turned to me and said, "It would help me with my research, and I would really like to know, 'How do you identify yourself to yourself?' "

I tried to avoid her question, but she came back with it. So I decided to be candid with her. I said, "I identify myself to myself as God's own child. As such, I express all the qualities of God, such as love, intelligence, purpose, joy. Since God is the source of these qualities, I see them as permanent elements of my nature, not subject to age, marital or social status, motherhood, job."

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