Homeland and Identity

I believe that every person’s identity consists of a variety of factors: qualities, beliefs, personality, appearance, expression, self-identity (beliefs about one’s self), collective identity (the people you surround yourself with & identify with), environment, and homeland. In my opinion, our homeland is what sets the foundation of our identity, it’s the roots of our ever-growing tree of identity. While many other parts of our identity are subject to constant change, the soil that we were born on and began growing our roots is forever attached to us even as our homeland itself changes its identity we’re still connected.  

My personal connection with my homeland is deeply rooted in my identity. My entire family is Canadian including myself. Though I may no longer live in Canada my entity is drawn back to my homeland Ontario, Canada every day. My homeland is my extended family – the people who I love so dearly and have the pleasure of visiting each year. My homeland is my passion. It’s my pride. My homeland is beautiful. It’s the way I elongate my “O”s and repeatedly told, “You are so kind, it must be because you’re Canadian.” 

As humans, we place so much importance on heritage, name, and place because at the end of the day we all want to know where we come from. We all desire a sense of belonging. As humans, we are self-centered and we want more than anything to matter. We want our lives to mean something. A place is its history, its present, and its future. A place is the lives who have touched it. Place, identity, and history are all intertwined with one another. 

I believe that there is too much emphasis placed on one’s identity & homeland. While our homeland is important to our identity, as it provides us with a sense of belonging, our homeland should not be the sole construct of our identity. Homelands, places, countries, and continents are simply speckled pieces of green on a large blue circle – they’re a product of history. This is the way it has always been. All the way back to 4.5 billion years ago when the first signs of life appeared on Earth to present-day 2020. The land we walk on, the water we swim in, and the air we breathe are products of history, they’re products of the past. We’ve all heard the cliche about not getting stuck in the past or getting lost in the possibilities of the future, but instead to live in the moment. Ahh yes, the classic “live in the moment” phrase. Though it may be cheesy in many ways this saying is quite fitting in my opinion. The past is something we learn from and the future is full of dreams of change.

The problem with allowing ourselves to develop our identity solely based on our homeland is that we are developing our identity based on history. While it is important to remember the past in order to learn from it we do not want to be stuck in it. When people identify themselves too strongly with a place/homeland they’re identifying themselves with the past and in many cases that past is not well suited for their present-day lives and the future. When we base things on the past we overlook important changes that are taking place right now and our actions are inappropriate and offensive. Take racism, for example, racism is our modern-day slavery, it is an abusive construct that should have been left in the past (or never taken place for that matter) and learned from instead of continuing to be associated with how people think nowadays.  

This concept of letting a place/homeland that is so deeply rooted in its history and allowing it to define our identity reminded me of something the author Rushdie said in her story “Imaginary Homelands.” She says,

“The broken glass is not merely a mirror of nostalgia. It is also, I believe, a useful tool with which to work in the present” (Rushdie 12).

Our homeland is a source of our identity. It is a source that we can rely on to help us continue to develop our identity in the present. The problem however is when we let solely our homeland define, control, and trap our identity in the past instead of using our homeland as a baseline to continue to develop and grow our identity in the present.

October 9th, 2020