Reflection 2
.pdf
School
University of British Columbia**We aren't endorsed by this school
Course
CNPS 433
Subject
Philosophy
Date
Jan 6, 2025
Pages
4
Uploaded by h3nryxu
The makeup of my identity is a makeup of my identity is a mixture of my present selves as well as my future possible hoped-for selves and feared selves. Upon conducting the self-awareness activity, several future possible hoped-for selves and feared selves has been identified and their situations around them as well as influences or reasoning that supports my different possible future selves. My parents are my greatest influences on my future selves when it comes to following their footsteps or learning from my experiences and wanting to becoming an individual that reflects the opposite of my parents’ identities. Some hoped-for future selves that reflect the positive influences from my parents is wanting to become a creative do-it-yourself individual following my father’s path. Growing up, my father was the person to be relied on not only for our own households, but also my family’s friends’ households when any home related issues arise. My father works as an electrician and knows the extensive details and structures that are related to houses allowing him to perform many different types of household fixes, installations and upgrades and knew exactly which tools and equipment he needed. Fortunately, as a child I’ve had many opportunities to be around my father while he was doing all sorts of household work and even obtained some hands-on experiences while helping with certain tasks. As an adult today I’ve expanded my knowledge to building do-it-yourself store-bought furniture with the proper tools and equipment, but my knowledge is still lacking if I were to be performing my own household fixes in the future and become the dependable household adult like my father. Another positive hoped-for future self that is influenced by my parents involves becoming a world traveler and indulging myself to experience the different scenery and culture the has yet to be discovered by me. Throughout the last years while I was in school, my parents have had the opportunities to visit many different countries
across the globe together and independently and share upon their unique experiences, stories and souvenirs to their friends and family. As an individual who has remained within the proximity of my own home for majority of my life, becoming a world traveler will allow me to experience all the stories my parents have told me personally, but also expand beyond the horizons I am familiar and grasp a greater understanding on society outside of my own and how different parts of the world operates. This will hopefully allow myself to broaden my understanding of the world and its complexity and more importantly so allow me to tell my own stories about my travels and in hopes to my own family the same way my parents have. However, my parents have also had negative influences that reflected upon my identity to become a future possible self that is the opposite of them. My mother in particular is considered to be a hoarder and ever since moving into our own home 10 year ago, she tends to buy a lot more stuff than the household requires and, in some cases, repeated purchases of existing products at home. Excessive purchasing without removal of existing purchases leads to a buildup of products all around the house and creating a messy, disorganized, and uncomfortable living environment. As a result of this, I despise my mother’s current self and attempt to create an identity and self that strays as far south as my mother’s. I consider my current self to be a frugal individual and only making purchases when it is necessary and for the greatest deal possible. I am hoping that based on my own household experiences I have encountered and my current identity, my future self to become a minimalistic individual for my own place and consistently keeping my mindset, ideals and living simplistic. As for my future feared self, my genetic make-up from the contribution of my mother and father has influenced by fear of having very poor eyesight or blindness in the future. Both of my parents are plagued with myopia (nearsightedness) and have been wearing prescription lenses for nearly the entirety of their lives. As a result, with genetic factors potentially into play, I have also been
plagued with myopia at a young age and my current eyesight consists of high degree of myopia. Both of my parents also have high degrees of myopia with my mother’s condition being slightly worse than my own, while my father had already needed to perform a surgery for his cornea. My greatest fear about my future self is the greater reliance to screen-related technology that did not exist during my parent’s early life, resulting in greater stress to my eyes because of long hours of screen time and becoming more prone to visual impairments. The groups I belong to and participate with reflects my important values, personality, and identity. Being an individual of a Chinese descent, my ethnicity defines my identity and historically individuals of the same ethnic backgrounds faced struggles in the Western countries and are often talked upon as minorities. When it comes to my participation, I have found myself to be more comfortable interacting and engaging with other individuals of the “Asian minority group”. Being born to an Asian household by parents who have immigrated to Canada from their Asian home countries, my entire life has been raised by the exact Chinese tradition and culture my parents has experienced and taught by their parents back in their home country. As a result, myself, and other individuals such as my friends and colleagues within the same group feel a sense of familiarity, connectedness, and a sense of belonging when we interact and participate in activities together. More importantly so, my belongingness to this group empowers myself and others who are considered minorities to share our experiences, support each other during times of discrimination, and advocate against racism. Another group that I belong to is within a friend group that was formed during my identity as high school student because of our collective same interest in playing video games. To this day, my belongingness to this video game friend group remains as my friends and I continue to have interest in video games, but our participation of playing
together has been on a decline as our lives have become busier. The main and initial values of belonging to this group was for all of us to have each other to play videos games with during our free time, however, benefits also become disadvantages as the group stray away from video games thus challenging our belongingness.