I had this thought: If we didn’t have the intentions of the parents of our youthful beings telling us, or labelling us, into what we are– a speaker of Chinese, for example– who would we actually be? How much does language shape identity, and how much of it is false/true?
In my example, sometimes I can get lost in the world of English. I forget that I can speak Chinese, and that that is a part of me, too. We contain multitudes has never had a more profound meaning, but it is in those moments when something is EXPECTED from you that things go awry. Because what happens then is that you’re forced to be a certain way, rather than are a certain way, and that comes out as inauthentic.