Brooklyn again

We went to see our friends in Brooklyn again. They had blankets this time (apparently, their daughter had used them to make a large tent in her room last time), but it was pretty warm anyway. Park Slope is a great area. I think I lived there briefly, and I went to school there for kindergarten and first grade. We went out to buy some food for dinner and I held my friend's dog while he went into the cheese shop. Really first class people watching, with the classic New York scene of two guys walking along the street, hair, face and arms completely painted, one in tiger stripes and the other in rainbow tie-die. Of course, nobody even gives them a glance as they walk by. What a city.

The play we saw, Sizwe Bansi is Dead, is an apartheid era South African play, which I first saw in London in 1974. It was more powerful back then, with apartheid still in effect (it didn't begin to change until the late 1980s) and Nelson Mandela in jail (again, until the late '80's). It's a bit of a relic now, but still an interesting study in what makes up one's identity. A quick synopsis: an illiterate black man, Sizwe Bansi leaves a dessert town where there are no jobs to try to get work in the nearest city. He lacks a permit to work there, and the police stamp his "dom book" (internal passport) that he must return to his home. Before leaving he goes out drinking with an acquaintance and they happen upon a dead body in an alley. They take his dom book, which has the proper work permit. So Sizwe must decide if he wants to stay and work, but give up his identity, or go home. And it's funny!

Identity is always a tricky area to tread into. I have no attachment to my name at all- I don't think it's really part of me. So what constitutes my identity? Is it what people think of me? I'd hate to think that the essence of one's self is externally imposed. And on at least some level I don't really care what most people think about me, because I'm pretty sure that most people don't spend any time thinking about me.

Is it what I think about myself? We all know our share of people with a pretty significant disconnect between what they think of themselves and the kind of person that they really are. Is it a kind of objective judgment of your actions? Your intentions? Your upbringing? The moral choices you make? I've chosen to try to be a particular type of person and have figured out a pretty consistent way that I think I can accomplish that. But I'm naturally kind of introspective and I was a psychology major and had my share of therapy years back, so maybe I'm better equipped than most to create an identity for myself.

So how about everyone else? I have no idea what constitutes identity to even my closest friends. Do they even think about it? It's not the kind of thing you discuss over dinner. So I guess the play was worthwhile if it got me thinking this way.