Yesterday, I was flipping through an old journal entry from age 17. The question I was pondering then was, “what is my identity?” of which I wrote:

Table tennis athlete, musician, student.

Reading this entry startled me, for now I wouldn’t recognise two of those three titles as my own. I stopped playing competitive table tennis two years ago, and last touched my viola around the same time. Only being a student has remained the same, albeit now in a different time and place.

It’s interesting to see how our identity shifts with time. Someone who played football in high school can’t call himself an athlete forever. Someone who left a business two years ago can’t keep calling himself a businessman. At some stage, we pick up new interests, spend our time in different ways and give ourselves new identities.

Discarding old titles can hurt. A lot. One of the most traumatic events of my childhood occurred when I removed the title of having a father. It’s natural to want consistency in our identity. Change can be a real disorienting pain in the ass. Yet, short-term trauma is often necessary for long-term progress so for the sake of growth, we endure.

Now, five years later, my answer to the identity question is something closer to:

Reader, writer, explorer of ideas.