What appears as a straightforward question contains a lot of implicit assumptions. One of those close to the surface is, for example, the idea that ‘being from somewhere’ means having been born and grown up there. What if a person was born in one place, moved somewhere else before they could even remember themselves, then started school someplace else and finished it in yet another location? By the time they had reached early adulthood, they had moved through four ‘somewheres’ – how should they respond to the question, where are you from?
There is a less obvious assumption in this question that invites a closer investigation of our thoughts. It is the idea that the ‘you’ – the person being addressed – is a clearly defined and delimited entity. The assumption is that ‘I’ have an exact beginning at my birth, precise boundaries during my life and, presumably, will have a clear end at my death. But is it so? This line of thought treats each individual as an isolated unit that can be understood in itself because it is fully self-contained. Are we, though? I do not doubt the uniqueness of each person, but are we each so unique that we can honestly believe ourselves to be absolutely separate from everything that came before us and led, through a multitude of coincidences, to us being here? In other words, where to draw the boundaries of a person?
Of course, this question does not have a single and universal answer. In a legal context, for instance, we must and do agree on individual responsibility and liability. But in a more philosophical context, the question becomes interesting. Namely – how should we understand ourselves? Am I a ‘self-made’ woman? I don’t think so, but there are many who claim they are. They want to highlight their personal dedication and achievement, which is a worthy thing to note. And yet… is anyone ever entirely ‘self-made’? Purely biologically, of course not. We all were ‘made’ by other people. As a person – that is where we get more self-determination potential. But on this level, too, I do not think we can be properly understood (or understand ourselves) without appreciating all the ‘background’ and the current context of our lives that contribute to who we are. And, by extension, to where ‘we’ are from.
For example, a person born and raised in country X might consider their family past to understand better who ‘they’ are. I do not mean just personality traits or hair colour. Let’s say their parents, each from a different place, met in that X country as young adults because one of them moved there as a child with their family (from yet another location), and one of them was born there because their family had moved to country X earlier due to some fancy of history. Perhaps each of these families was also comprised of people from different places. In total, some three or four countries of origin and a lot of movement are involved in one person’s story before they are born. All this has led to them being born and raised in that particular family and place. So – where is this person from? Where do we draw the line of ‘their’ beginning?
If we say this person is from country X and did not experience all that movement and all those different places of their predecessors, we are drawing a sharp boundary and cutting them away from all that background. That was then – this is now; that was them – this is you. Yes, ‘you’. But doesn’t this ‘you’ contain something from all of ‘them’? Genetically, sure. Beyond that – how? We do not inherit ideas, attitudes or worldviews in the biological sense. Yet, we are social beings, not isolated, fully self-contained entities. People who raise us, who take care of us, influence us. Without being aware of it (yet), we soak up many of their beliefs, pains, joys, attitudes and values, potentially shared with enough of their contemporaries, and maybe also partially unaware. They, in turn, were similarly influenced by their caregivers and so on.
Where to draw the boundary of a person, where do ‘I’ begin, how the silences shape us – that is one of the themes the author Elif Shafak explores in her excellent and thought-provoking book “The Island of Missing Trees” (2021). Referring to the painful experiences and memories of war interpreted and integrated differently by different generations within the same families, she writes:
“Way too often, the first generation of survivors, the ones who had suffered the most, kept their pain close to the surface, memories like splinters lodged under their skin, some protruding, others completely invisible to the eye. Meanwhile, the second generation chose to suppress the past, both what they knew and did not know of it. In contrast, the third generation were eager to dig away and unearth silences. How strange that in families scarred by wars, forced displacements and acts of brutality, it was the youngest who seemed to have the oldest memory.”
Elif Shafak, The Island of Missing Trees
Note that such influences are not deterministic. People become aware of their previously ‘received’ beliefs and values, they self-reflect, change their views and influence others in new ways. But that is not the point of this story. What is the point, you might ask? To suggest that the philosophical boundaries of the ‘you’ in the ‘where are you from’ question are not as exact and self-contained as the pragmatic boundaries (such as we use for legal purposes to determine legal status, for instance). Philosophical boundaries have to do with our efforts of self-reflection and self-understanding. I know I am not my grandmother. But I still may have received from her some beliefs or attitudes, more or less changed by passing through generations of the family, spoken or unspoken, reinterpreted along the way in line with each individual’s circumstances, reaching me as the ‘material’ that contributes to the making of me as a person and available to me (if I become aware of it) for a new reinterpretation.
Where am I from? Philosophically – from all the places and people whose stories, known and unknown, had come together in the way they did, enabling me to be here now asking this question. Legally – from Latvia.
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