Discovering the Self - Essay Example

? Discovering the Self Teacher               Through my exposure to culture and experience, I have come to develop in me astrong will power to do the things I believe I had to do to achieve my goals in life. However, before I was able to realize this, I had pain and struggle against poverty and the way I experienced pain and struggle as well as how I turned them into success defines my existence. What helped me much here was the realization that money was such a powerful tool and the fact that the United States is dominated by an independent culture. Aside from these, I sought help from three dimensions of culture – power distance, desire for material and financial success, and long-term orientation. Now, I have become a person who has already learned survival, strength and responsibility and someone who does not leave things to fate. Nevertheless, this construct is not fixed because given different circumstances, I would most likely change into someone else. This is the real me when I am alone and when I am in the company of others. Discovering the Self How is it that I know that I exist and who tells me this and why am I certain that I believe them? Through experience and insight, I have defined my existence, but mainly through experience with the culture I have come to adopt. Through my struggles with poverty and through the pain I have experienced because of it, I have come to realize who I am – an individual with strong personal convictions because of my insights and experience, and at the same time one who is constantly changing as I imbibe more insight and gain more experience. In short, it is my strong personal convictions from my insights and experience that make me believe that I exist. Moreover, the contrast that my life of poverty made with the relatively more affluent people around us somehow created and developed in me a sense of uniqueness and therefore a sense of self. Nevertheless, I believe that any future insight and experience will change me further and may even change everything that I am because I believe that more than anything else, culture is a “creator” (Matsumoto & Juang, 2008). In my case, my experience with and exposure to culture did not do much to enhance my existing behavior, enable me to do certain things, or suppress many of my ways. Rather, it created in me a strong will power that directed my life in the way I believe I should live it. The question now is: How have I come to become who I am now? For the most part, money dictated who I should be and it governed how I should think and how I should act the way I do. Money is one of the factors that influence the creation of culture and through my experiences in life, I have proven that indeed “abundant money can help to buffer the consequences of a lack of resources…which in turn have interesting psychological consequences” (Matsumoto & Juang, 2008). However, I have proven this by living the opposite. I lived a very poor childhood with a step dad who just drank and abused my mother. I even remember eating ketchup on a cracker for dinner and having to move all the time for we could not afford living anywhere for too long. I never even got involved in school activities because I needed money to join any club or sport activity. All the while I was thinking to myself that in all these times I could have done something or changed my life had I only had an abundance of money. With enough money, my mother and we, kids, could have run away from our step dad and we could have lived a better and more comfortable life and perhaps studied in good schools and joined all the activities I wish I had been a part of. However, in my case, culture – particularly the aspect of the lack of money – did not only try to suppress some of my needs and wants in life but also created in me a strong spirit of a typical survivor. I was able to internalize the pain of poverty for so long and was somehow able to “perceive and express [and understand such an] emotion accurately and adaptively” and I believe that somehow some degree of “emotional intelligence” developed in me (Crowne, Phatak, & Salunkhe, 2009). This emotional intelligence brought me awareness of the reality of my situation and it did so constructively. Although many people would turn the pain of poverty into a feeling of bitterness, I turned this pain into every means to survive and get out of it. So, how is it that I think and act the way that I do? I became who I am now mainly because of my conscious decision to get out of the poverty I was in. I was sick and tired of the mess and the pain that I would find myself in every single moment. I therefore chose to be reliable, responsible and strong. I began viewing things in life as a struggle and something that one has to conquer through his strength and sense of responsibility, and naturally, through one of the universal values – mastery of my own natural and social environment (Matsumoto & Juang, 2008). Moreover, such mastery or power depended only on what I thought was right and my actions were. Nevertheless, without a sense of independence, such strength and sense of responsibility would not have been possible. It is a fact that in independent cultures such as those in North America and particularly here in the United States, “there is a strong culturally shared belief in the independence of the self from others” and that one’s major task in independent cultures is “to discover, actualize, and confirm these internal attributes of the self” such as “protecting one’s own rights,” and developing strength as well as a sense of responsibility to make this happen (Fischbach, 2009). In short, the independent culture of the United States somehow inspired me to develop my own strength and my own sense of self. Instead of asking help from my family and peers and instead of accepting my fate, I decided to gather up my remaining strength and did everything I could to get out of poverty. I poured myself in homework in order to be a straight A student, and I started working at the age of 15 so that I could get contacts as well as some new clothes for myself, and I succeeded. Aside from the independent and individualistic culture of the United States that helped me develop my strength and sense of responsibility, several other factors helped me to become the strong individual that I am now. In fact, one of the five value dimensions of culture from which I gained so much insight during the years that I was developing my strength to get out of poverty was the dimension of power distance. As power distance “[encourages] less powerful members of groups to accept that power is distributed unequally,” I recalled that in order for me to rise to where I am in life now, I had to believe first that life was unfair not only that time but always (Matsumoto & Juang, 2008). Had I not decided to realize that life was unfair, I would have become a rebellious youth who would have communist and leftist ideas and who would never stop hating and blaming society. At exactly the same time that I realized that life was unfair, I decided to make things seem less unfair to me, I stopped blaming society, and I took all the responsibility myself. After all, nothing could be solved by complaining about the injustice in our midst. Moreover, with my newfound strength and sense of responsibility, I unconsciously developed the need to manifest the masculine value dimension of culture – desire for success, money and things (Matsumoto & Juang, 2008). If I had been stuck to the feminine dimension of caring for others, I would not have been able to reach many of my goals in life. I admit that I am an understanding person and this somehow balanced the independence and strength. Nevertheless, although I am a woman, the masculine dimension of success, money and things should be one of my top priorities in an independent culture. Lastly, the value dimension of long term orientation, or “the degree to which [a culture encourages] delayed gratification of material…needs among its members,” has also been one of my top priorities (Matsumoto & Juang, 2008). If I had not learned how to delay my desires while I was still developing my strength and sense of responsibility, I am sure that I would have faltered. Moreover, as I developed a sense of responsibility, I also developed power, and I have learned that “high-power individuals’ thoughts and actions are governed more by internal thoughts and goals than by the external context” (Kraus, Chen, & Keltner, 2011). I could not agree more. I had to endure the hunger, disappointments, and the criticisms of other people as I worked my way from high school to the Air Force and the Army. How does my personal expectation play a role in the way you see or interpret things? The development in me of a strong independence and an equally strong sense of responsibility coupled with an invincible stance somehow changed the way I saw and interpreted things as I grew up and as I gradually broke free from the shackles of poverty. Before, I looked at things and life as destined fate but now I see all these as basically conquerable challenges. I used to think that my life depended on fate and God, but now I believe it depended more on me and my decisions. Somehow this change in perspective I have adopted also influenced how I am with others. How then does the way I interpret things influence how I am with others? A long time ago, I used to sympathize with others’ plight and would whine and gripe endlessly with them. However, things have changed now – I tell them to stop complaining and putting blame on others, to develop independence and responsibility, and I encourage or even push them to find solutions to their problems just like what I did and what I do in life. Believe it or not, this is still the understanding and sympathetic side of me. Who then am I and does who I am change or is this construct fixed? Overall, I am or I have become a person who has learned survival and was able to survive poverty through my determination to achieve my goals in life and through the independent culture that prevailed in my country. As a survivor, I was able to “adapt to [my] environment and to the context in which [I] live” (Matsumoto & Juang, 2008). The financial problems I had when I was a child were dealt with using a positive approach – the development in me of a particular independence that instilled in me a sense of responsibility and brought me strength. I am this person now – a strong and responsible woman – but this construct is not fixed. I was not like this before and so there is no reason that I will be like this forever. I am only hoping though that I will be better in case I change. So, when no one else is around, who am I and is this person different from who I want to be? Actually, this present construct is the same person that I am, whether or not people are around, and this is what I have always wanted to be – strong and responsible and able to control many things in my life. I am happy that I am not anymore the helpless child that I was before. References Crowne, K. A., Phatak, A. V., & Salunkhe, U. (2009). Chapter 12: Does culture influence intelligence? A study of the influence of cultural context. Emotions in groups, organizations and cultures (research on emotion in organizations) (pp. 275–297). Ed. Charmine E. J. Hartel, Neal M. Askanasy, & Wilfred J. Zerbe. Emerald Publishing Group Limited. Retrieved Jul. 8, 2012 from the Brandman University Online Library. Fischbach, A. (2009). Chapter 13: Cross-national cross-cultural research of emotions at work: a review and some recommendations. Emotions in groups, organizations and cultures (research on emotion in organizations) (pp. 299–325). Ed. Charmine E. J. Hartel, Neal M. Askanasy, & Wilfred J. Zerbe. Emerald Publishing Group Limited. Retrieved Jul. 8, 2012 from the Brandman University Online Library. Kraus, M. W., Chen, S., & Keltner, D. (2011). The power to be me: Power elevates self-concept consistency and authenticity. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 47, 974–980. Matsumoto, D., & Juang, L. (2008). Culture and psychology (pp. 1–27). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth. Read More