There is a phrase adults love telling teenagers:
“Be yourself.”
I have always found that slightly confusing.
Which self?
The person you are with your family?
Your roommate?
Your teammates?
Your closest friends?
The person who answers a teacher’s question in class?
The person walking alone back to the dorm?
There is a word from Nguni Bantu traditions that offers a very different way of thinking about identity: Ubuntu.
It is often translated as “I am because we are.”
At first, that sounds like the kind of sentence that belongs on an inspirational poster.
But the longer I have been at Blair, the less cheesy it sounds.
We like pretending that people construct themselves independently. Work hard enough, become confident enough, discover yourself.
But I do not think that is really how it happens.
Other people build parts of us.
A teacher makes you take an idea seriously before you do.
A teammate teaches you how you behave when you lose.
A friend introduces you to music you eventually cannot imagine not knowing.
Someone says one sentence to you casually and, somehow, you remember it three years later.
Even the people who annoy us change us.
Ubuntu suggests that identity is not something we protect from other people. It is something created through them.
Your accomplishments may belong to you, but the person capable of accomplishing them did not appear alone.
That feels particularly obvious at a boarding school.
We eat together, study together, argue together, compete together and see one another at hours when nobody looks particularly impressive.
Eventually, people become part of the architecture of your life.
And then one day you realize that some phrase you always say came from your friend.
Some habit came from your roommate.
Some confidence came from a teacher who trusted you before you trusted yourself.
Maybe “be yourself” is incomplete.
Maybe Ubuntu asks a better question:
Who helped you become yourself?
