People!

Anonymous How can we not thinking about people?  Everywhere we turn, there is another human being in front of us.  Not to mention the fact that by the end of all of this, we will have to write out  a paper that uses what we've learned about our identity with a text or two from the class.  The observation of people is particularly key.

From some pretty thorough discussion, I've found that there are many people on this trip who do not want to take a close look at their identity.  I wonder, what natural instinct we have that makes us shy away from such intimacy; that's exactly what it is, intimacy with who you are.  I fee like our culture attempts to have us figure this out, but does not support a lifestyle that allows for us to truly experience it.  We do not just walk around in the evening, with magnificent sites, contemplating what is so wonderful about the world.  Though we really have no legitimate reason as to why this ins't a possibility.  We have Mt. Rainier, we have the Puget Sound waterfront, we have plenty of woods/trees, and when all else fails, we have benches in Red Square that allow us to look up into the sky at the stars.  Maybe the people here in Greece do not do this sort of thing as often as I imagine them to.  I could just be making a very American, idealistic, assumption.  But that right there would say a lot about me and what I value as important, wouldn't it?  My projection of deep thought and appreciation onto a whole other culture.

I feel fortunate because I am in a culture of absolutely wonderful people, and I am learning about other people from this area, just in a different time, that may give me some basis for how we arrived at the point we are standing in now.  Their identity formation was vastly based on different things, yet when you boil it all down, they have the same human instincts as me and I am able to see that their identity construction really wasn't that different.  They, too, were just trying to lead a healthy, successful, meaningful, and happy life.  That's all any of us could really ask for.