The Unexamined Life, Part 2: Whose Are You?

What was your initial response to the title of this post: Whose are you? 

It’s not a typo! You may have read it at first as, “Who are you?” which is a question about our individual identity. “Whose are you?” is a question about belonging; it recognizes that our individual selves are formed and sustained by others.

In other words, we become who we are within a community. We are shaped by our culture and our family, by friends, bosses, co-workers, teachers, and casual acquaintances. The answer to whether our individual identities come from nature (our DNA) or nurture is, “Both.” With any luck, we are nurtured in a loving-enough environment that enables us to not only survive but to thrive.

In my post The Unexamined Life Part 1: Copy That!, I asked you to make a list of the people whose love for you sustains your ability to love yourself. I could have asked it this way: “Whose are you?” The people on your list are the answers to the question. They are the community to whom you belong. By imitating their love for you, you learn to love yourself. 

I presented that insight about the role of imitation in self-love with a warning that imitation doesn’t always work for good. The danger comes as we are learning to be part of our community, where we are also learning the things that mark others as outsiders. In the song “Popular”, Galinda makes explicit something unconscious in most of us:  We learn how to fix our hair, and how NOT to fix our hair; the proper shoes and the IMPROPER shoes. How to be good at sports and how NOT to be unathletic, and so on.

Each community you belong to — whether you call it a clique or a club or a political party or congregation — has a clear sense of who is on the inside (good people like them), who is on the outside (the wicked witches), and how to tell the difference. The most danger arises when marks of outsider-status are believed indelible. If we believe that good and bad, inside and outside are fixed traits, then we can easily justify our hatred of others and become so ego-inflated that we don’t even consider we might be behaving badly.

Up to that embarrassingly uncomfortable moment at the Ozdust Ballroom, when Elphaba is standing alone in the middle of the dancefloor, Galinda believed that Elphaba was on the outside. Elphaba was everything that Galinda was not, which Galinda’s clique delighted in pointing out. Their sense of themselves as good and loveable is reinforced by having Elphaba around, so they can compare themselves to her. In fact, when Galinda has pangs of conscience and rushes to Elphaba’s side, her friends hiss at her: “What are you doing? Stop!” 

The look on Galinda’s face at that moment is priceless! She suddenly sees them for how cruel and insecure they truly are. They have been Galinda’s answer to the question, “Whose are you?”, just as she has been for them — and it suddenly sickens her.  “No,” she says, turning back to join Elphaba. Seeing Elphaba’s suffering destroys her belief in the ways they have defined who is in and who is out.

Galinda enters into a new relationship of imitation — this time in a mutual dance with Elphaba. She awkwardly imitates the one who had been left outside her clique. And yet, beautifully, her clique and all of Shiz join in the new dance. The wonderful thing about imitation is that it is flexible. Our capacity for redirecting our attention towards a different model is what makes personal and community-wide transformation possible.

Of course, in a movie or play, the time frame is condensed! Transformation rarely happens so quickly; old habits are hard to break. But the realization that change is necessary can hit us quickly and often painfully, like a punch in the gut. 

I encourage you to look closely at who you are dancing with these days. They may be ones who formed you, who loved you and who taught you to love yourself. But if they are preventing you from recognizing the good in those being kept outside, there’s no need to chastise or condemn them. Better to find a new dance partner, and see where it takes you.

Till next time, remember to always mourn the wicked. It’s what good people do.