Identity

A "journey of self-discovery" refers to a travel, pilgrimage, or series of events whereby a person attempts to determine how they feel, personally, about spiritual issues or priorities, rather than following the opinions of family, friends, neighborhood or peer pressure. The topic of self-discovery has been associated with Zen.

In philosophy, identity, from Latin: identitas ("sameness"), is the relation each thing bears only to itself. The notion of identity gives rise to many philosophical problems, including the identity of indiscernibles (if x and y share all their properties, are they one and the same thing?), and questions about change and personal identity over time (what has to be the case for a person x at one time and a person y at a later time to be one and the same person?).

Sexual identity is how one thinks of oneself in terms of to whom one is romantically or sexually attracted. Sexual identity may also refer to sexual orientation identity, which is when people identify or dis-identify with a sexual orientation or choose not to identify with a sexual orientation. Sexual identity and sexual behavior are closely related to sexual orientation, but they are distinguished, with identity referring to an individual's conception of themselves, behavior referring to actual sexual acts performed by the individual, and sexual orientation referring to romantic or sexual attractions toward persons of the opposite sex or gender, the same sex or gender, to both sexes or more than one gender, or to no one.

In philosophy, the matter of personal identity deals with such questions as, "What makes it true that a person at one time is the same thing as a person at another time?" or "What kinds of things are we persons?" Generally, personal identity is the unique numerical identity of a person in the course of time. That is, the necessary and sufficient conditions under which a person at one time and a person at another time can be said to be the same person, persisting through time.

A role (also rôle or social role) is a set of connected behaviors, rights, obligations, beliefs, and norms as conceptualized by people in a social situation. It is an expected or free or continuously changing behavior and may have a given individual social status or social position. It is vital to both functionalist and interactionist understandings of society. Social role posits the following about social behavior:

National identity is a person's identity or sense of belonging to one state or to one nation. It is the sense of "a nation as a cohesive whole, as represented by distinctive traditions, culture, and language." National identity may refer to the subjective feeling one shares with a group of people about a nation, regardless of one's legal citizenship status. National identity is viewed in psychological terms as "an awareness of difference", a "feeling and recognition of 'we' and 'they'".

Identity is the qualities, beliefs, personality, looks and/or expressions that make a person (self-identity) or group (particular social category or social group), in psychology. Categorizing identity can be positive or destructive.

A Dialogue on Personal Identity and Immortality is a book by the philosopher John Perry. It has been translated into Spanish, Chinese, Persian and Korean.

Unrooted Childhoods: Memoirs of Growing up Global is a book of memoirs of people who grew up in multiple countries, or moving frequently between distant regions within the same country, also known as third culture kids, and is edited by Faith Eidse and Nina Sichel. It documents the life (including the unique challenges, feelings of difference/outsiderism, and gifts) of growing up in multiple nations, cultures, and language-regions by weaving the individual memoirs of notable and also unknown writers, notables include Eidse, Sichel, Isabel Allende, Marie Arana, Pat Conroy, Pico Iyer, and many others into one book. It was published in 2003.

A first language (L1), native language, native tongue, or mother tongue is the first language a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period. In some countries, the term native language or mother tongue refers to the language of one's ethnic group rather than the individual's actual first language. Generally, to state a language as a mother tongue, one must have full native fluency in that language.