JTOI Part 3 Transcription

Journey To One's Identity Part 3 Transcription

Question: Name three words that describe you.

Patrick: I would probably choose loyal, trusting and silly. People always tell me that I'm really weird but as soon as I become friends with someone I treat them like my family.

Question: Can you tell me about yourself? What is your story?

Patrick: My story...okay. So I was born in Cincinnati Ohio, which is in the South part of the state and when I was 7, no 6 my family...um my mom got a new job and so we moved across state lines to Kentucky and so I grew up for 13 years in Louisville Kentucky and so my identity is very much divided between like my home town where my family is from and where all my like extended relatives live and Louisville where my immediate family live and where I ended up going to school, meeting friends and having my entirety, my entire identity formed. In Ohio you're like in a Midwest state, so in the United States the Midwest, and when you're in Kentucky a lot of Kentuckians consider themselves Southern and so I have this very much like this very conflicting identity within myself of this like difference between whether I'm like a Midwestern person or whether I'm Southern but a lot of the ways in which I express myself, the ways in which I was cultured are like formed on this divide that is like created by the Ohio river between these two states because when I introduce myself, when I say I'm from Kentucky, people instantly think things about me and then they're like, "Well no, you're more Midwest," and then I'm like but I am also from Kentucky.

Question: What are your hobbies?

Patrick: I really like to write and read; I read and write a lot, so I'm really into poetry specifically beat poetry from the 50s in the United States, The Beatnix. I love British-lit, classic literature in general from Tolstoy to Hemingway and I like to write music and produce it. I also a lot of video games which is, which is a vice I would say I don't know if I would call it a hobby.

Question: When and where were you born?

Patrick: I was born in December of 1999 so I was born right before the new Millennium began, the end of the century, does why I hope that I live till I'm 101 so that I live in three centuries.

Question: What was it like where you grew up?

Patrick: Where I grew up in Ohio my family was pretty...very middle class and very Catholic, so I grew up from a young age, I went to church every Sunday and it was Latin Mass Catholic Church so it was very traditional but when my family moved to Louisville that kind of changed. I grew up my-my mom made more money so we were well-off more well-off. Um I grew up in a suburb right next to a golf course, a very 'American Dream' kind of suburb. It was a very easy life and I'm very aware of that.

Question: Where do you feel at home?

Patrick: Uh...that's a good question. I think I feel at home when I'm with people I love and care about. I don't think home is like a place because like I say I identify with Kentucky but like I think I'm more identify with the people I've met here because if everyone I know who is from Kentucky lived somewhere else I wouldn't identify with the geography I would identify with the people that I've come to love, care about who have helped me grow, who I've helped grow, and so I definitely feel at home like when I'm with people which is I think been pretty difficult with Covid because it's not responsible to be with people. But yeah, definitely with the people I care about.

Question: Who was the most influential person to you as a child?

Patrick: That's hard [to answer], I think the answer is my dad. So I grew up, my mom worked and my dad was a stay-at-home, so my dad stayed with me and was always around so the entire time from when I was, before I started school to when I started school 'till I finish High School, my dad was always the person who was there to pick me up and drop me off for every sporting event, for every after-school activity, who who fed me, who took care of me. And he kinda like, he produced a lot of my moral compass and my beliefs and he's definitely like that person who had like the biggest impact on me.

Question: What field do you study in? What made you choose that?

Patrick: When I was young, the only thing I really knew about my mom with that she was a lawyer and I thought that was really cool. I didn't-my mom was busy all the time, she was like always working to like try to get us like to keep us alive and that was like, it was her job she was working and she worked a lot of hours and I knew she was a lawyer and I knew that I loved my mom and so I wanted to be a lawyer and right now I'm actually preparing to take the law school examination test, admissions test, it's LSAT in the United States, to apply for Law after I graduate next spring. I know more about what I want to do as a lawyer but I still want to have the exact same job that I did when I was 4 years old.

Question: How would you describe identity?

Patrick: I think identity is all of the things that make you. And I think identity is like, is the best and worst of us it's it's not just the things that you like about yourself, like identity is very much personal and also social. They're like so many different types of identity because like there's the identity of self where like I can tell you what I think of myself as and who I am as a person but then there's a completely different identity that society has of me and there's actually like many of those like I have many identities in many different places. And definitely I think moving has shaped my identity. My entire childhood was shifted very early from where I expected to go to school, from the people that I had already grown up with, to like having to make completely new friends and also have like this completely new world where I was being socialised into. And so I think my identity has been very much morphed by having moved.

Question: Do you think your identity has evolved over time? Does it keep evolving?

Patrick: You know, I always actually joke about this. It's funny that, it's funny that this is a question 'cuz I frequently joke about this because I am-my beliefs have like been pretty consistent since Middle School and so like I usually joke to my high school friends, I'm like, "I am the least changed person of all of our friends," like "I'm not different at all," like "My personality has not changed," but that's obviously not true. My identity has definitely come into itself over time. I identify as queer and those are things that I definitely was in Middle School and High School, but I think they're importance and their prominence in who I want-who I have become has really changed and I feel much more secure and grounded in them than I did in High School. And so like I definitely think that my identity has changed over time and definitely evolved, I definitely like the word evolved because I think it's it's it's really like a transition where like you have developed, and so I think evolution is like a really good way of describing that. I don't think identity is stagnant I think its' always evolving, I think like change is like something that is constantly happening to us. You can undergo a situation and then realize very immediately after that it will have forever changed your identity.

Patrick: Like I took a course this last semester on Native American history in the United States and my entire perspective about Native Americans and my identity as a US citizen has been like changed. Like I feel so much different and like I always felt like there's always like, we've always been aware of it, like this history is not something that we're not aware of but like having it come to light very very viscerally for me, reading the accounts of people who went to assimilation schools and who were forced out on The Trail of Tears, like having to read these accounts and become more aware of them has definitely my identity and like changed that aspect of my identity. Same with being queer, like that doesn't mean the same thing as it did in 2010 or even like last month, so I think identity is definitely something that has to constantly change and you're always looking for your identity, it's like purpose. Purpose and identity I think are closely tied because our purposes are frequently tied to our identity. What causes do you care about are tied to the things you identify with.

Question: Do you know any languages other than English?

Patrick: Languages other than English...so I studied four years of French in high school {Je parle un peu de français} (I speak a little French), I studied German for three years in college including a semester abroad in Germany, {Mein Deustch ist nicht so gut} (My German isn't so good) um, it's been a while. And then I just took a semester of Japanese {おはようございます} (Good morning) and I all I learned them all through education I didn't-I don't have, my parents both speak other languages but they didn't teach them to us in our home so I learned them through school.

Question: If you could posses one superhuman power, what would it be and why?

Patrick: Well, I actually have spent a lot of time thinking about this and if I were to possess one single super power it would be the power to transform the environment. So like I would want to be able to like, say I'm walking in like a Forrest make it a Savannah or like make it into a desert things like that I think I would be like a really cool superpower.

Question: What place does religion have in your life?

Patrick: I think religion is really beautiful, I don't practice any religion. I grew up up Catholic I was confirmed by but I don't, religion isn't something that's like central to my being. I love learning about religion, I think religion is really, is a really awesome outlet for people and I think faith really provides a very important thing to a lot of people but it's it's not something that I think I need in my life right now and so I don't pursue it. I wouldn't say that I follow any religious tradition, I definitely have religion, religion is definitely tied to my identity like I can't get rid of the religion, the way I was raised in a religious setting. If I was to identify with any religion like most closely or like the tenants of it I think I think like the tenants in like the teachings of Daoism really kind of communicate the way I view the world and the way I want to interact with the world so I would probably Daoism but also Daoism is more of a philosophy than a religion so.

Question: What groups do you identity with?

Patrick: Well I definitely identify with the LGBTQ+ community, with all of the people who have ever felt outcast by society. I identify with Kentucky, I think you're a lot of groups I identify with but also I'm not one to like identify directly with like a group of people because I think that like that's like, I think each part definitely has a like, plays a part in my identity and there're people in those groups that do but I don't, I don't want to say that I care for a group as a whole because I think it's like really easy to overgeneralise.

Question: If you could personalise your credit card what would you have written on it?

Patrick: I think I'd probably put "You are enough." I think I really like that sentence. It's something that I think is like a really important Creed that a lot of people should should follow, listen to be, more aware of and like constantly remind themselves because I think it's really easy to lose sight of.

Question: What would you have written on your grave stone?

Patrick: I'm very sarcastic. If I was to like to have something on my tombstone, it'd probably be something really like sassy. I feel like on my tombstone it would just be something like "Good luck" because like I don't have to deal with whatever the future is, it's everyone else now. Like it's your, it's whatever you need to, whatever you're going to have to deal with, not me so good luck is probably what I would put on my tombstone. I think if people were to remember me I think they would remember me...I don't know, probably mean. People probably would say that I'm mean, too honest, mean but I think also hopefully I'll get remembered as being very loyal.

Question: Do you have any words to say to people who judge others for who they are?

Patrick: I think it's really easy to judge other people for their identity. I think it's like really easy to fall into the trap of stereotypes and being mean to people. And sure there are definitely things that people do that it's-I would say it's okay to be mean to them about, like if you do objectionably harmful things to other people it's okay to be mean to someone about that. But at the end of the day, there's a there's a lot of things in life that people have no power over, the places they're born, their socioeconomic status, their physical appearance, their gender and sexual identity, things like that, they're not things you should judge people for. If what they're doing is not harmful to other people, at the end of the day it should be okay, when I feel like our world would be so much better if we all just got more cut up and talking about the things we like and not feeling the need to say "Well actually I don't like that" or "Well, I don't like that". Like it doesn't really matter, like what you like doesn't really matter and shouldn't matte to other people unless of course you are raising an objection about the value of something. Like if you were saying "This is wrong", that's completely different. But like if someone is saying "I like rap music", well not all rap music's bad so you should just let them have it and just be like "Okay, cool". People do not need to be negative about the identity of other people and I think it's like very harmful to people especially in the age of the internet where our identities are being like painted on walls and people are just trying to graffiti all over them.

Question: Do you have any words for people who are trying to discover their identity?

Patrick: Be open, be ready to explore. Don't count out any direction and love yourself as you are. I know it can feel really difficult when you feel like you don't have any meaningful identity but you do, and it's just stuff that you're so used to you're so normalised to that you but you don't see it anymore but it's there and you don't need some huge thing or some noticeable thing, take the time you need to discover the new things you love and incorporate them into the things you already do.