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Enneagram Type 4 Board Archive Re: Who Am I?Posted by Ronnie on October 10, 1999 at 19:09:51: In Reply to: Who Am I? posted by Tiggy on October 10, 1999 at 17:07:45: It seems the both 2w1's on these boards are answering to you...strange! *LOL* I know quite a lot about my family backgrounds on my father's side, I know all the fathers have come from the same village in central Finland for seven generations. I still don't know how that would define me, actually I'm much prouder to say my granmother's grandfather was a German no one knows about (but makes me 1/16 German) Still, I don't know what all these ancestors did, except that they weren't significant persons and by some twist I haven't been able to figure out, I have one of the rarest family names in the world, originating from the name of a house in central Finland. You can start by "I'm from Essex" because it seems you are sure about that. Beyond that, I don't know. Y'know, my father doesn't know much about the family and doesn't want to. Once he joked, when we were talking, that "I know my son is very much family!" Sorry for being sidetracked, but I think each individual find his/her own answer for indentity in his/her own way. Even such a simple thing as accent can mean a lot. I remember that in grammar school, two years after having moved to Helsinki area from central Finland, hearing "even though Mikko [I suppose you know that is my real name--if you didn't, now you know] speaks differently, it's just richness" was a true blow to myself. I hadn't realized I had a central Finnish accent (which I still do, in varying strenghts depending on the situation) and didn't really know what to think of it. At some point I tried to suppress it, because it sounds very "country-like" as opposed to the urban "Helsinki slang". Now the basic sound has changed, but people can tell I'm originally not from Helsinki (unless I fake it, which I can do very well but don't want to). Something as simple as that can be a building block to your own identity. Another example is an accent in a foreign language, which has been an issue to me lately. (Actually English isn't a "foreign" language to me personally, but officially it is) I can do a perfect standard (southern flavored) american accent in english when concentrating on it, but I tend to have a very distinct finnish accent when not. There's so much variation between the two that my pronunciation teacher doesn't find anything wrong in it (when I'm in his classes) but tutorial teachers always reminds of it when I'm in her classes. For someone to whom the foreign language isn't so much a part of the identity it wouldn't be such an issue, but to me, thinking very often in english when I don't have to and finding many things easier to express in it, it is. Many women say that my current accent is very pleasent (they express it even in very strong positive terms :) and many people find foreign accents pleasent, but it's still upsetting to find I'm not "native-like" all the time. I know I'll get there very easily--if I just consistenly concetrate for a couple of months, it'll become automatic, but even this is a matter of identity, what I really want to sound like? I'm rambling egoistically now, but what I'm saying that you can find your identity in very strange places. Feeling or not feeling a connection to your family background doesn't really tell if you know who you are. I'm sure there are things about you that you know are very much you. The question should be if they are enough to you, not if others find they're good enough for them.
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