On Issues of Identity and Friendship

For a good chunk of my adult life, I’ve harbored a persistent feeling of non-belonging; feeling slightly mismatched to the group of people around me in a given social situation. The feeling has been a part of my consciousness for so long that it is almost a natural part of me now. Whenever I don’t feel it at certain times with certain people, I consciously notice its absence.

This feeling, however, was not as ubiquitous in my younger days when I was growing up in my parents’ home. I was surrounded by people who reflected my values, my interests, and my racial and cultural background. These people were family but were also numerous friends and acquaintances. I very much felt a sense of belonging to a group. I was unwavering in my belief in who I was and what I was about. But shortly before I left home for college, I began thinking about the person that I had become and whether or not the beliefs that I held were really my own. In retrospect, this development of self-doubt was natural and had to happen in order for my individuality to emerge. But at the time, it was discomforting, and I eventually attributed my feeling of discomfort to the cultural and religious dogma that my pakistani-muslim parents had passed down to me. I wanted to find my own way without culture and religion dictating the way to me. I wanted to find out how other people perceive me without my pakistani-muslim label showing. Would I still be the same person or a different person altogether? Would my true self shine through now that I had broken through the confines of my traditional pakistani-muslim upbringing? Would I like the ethnically-nondescript person better?

Shortly thereafter, the feeling of non-belonging was born.

Seven years have now passed since my questioning first began. During this period, I considered culture and religion to play a minor role in the development of my identity and of my social preferences. The underlying principle of my social life lay in the belief that true friendship need not be founded on commonalities in religious and/or cultural background. In other words, I will not necessarily like and enjoy a person’s company simply because our parents are immigrants from the same part of the world. On it’s own, I believe this idea has merit. True friendship can indeed arise and evolve under varied circumstances and between individuals of disparate backgrounds. But my embrace of this ideology at a time in my life when I may have lacked maturity and perspective somehow became an impediment in my openness to meet other pakistani-muslim people. Instead of diversifying my circle of friends, this ideology, in a way, exerted the opposite effect. I cannot say that I actively avoided people whose background was rooted in pakistani-muslim culture because that would not accurately describe my mindset and behavior. However, at the same time, I made little to no effort to seek out or befriend people within these groups either.

During these 7 years, my circle of friends became full, for the most part, of individuals that were very different from me culturally and religiously, but that were the same in terms of intellectual and recreational interests. Despite the satisfaction of developing many meaningful friendships, I still could not suppress a nagging feeling that one crucial element was absent in these relationships: empathy. One cannot fully understand another person’s situation unless she herself has experienced it. One may be able to offer sympathy, but not empathy, and real understanding of another person’s situation stems from the latter, not the former. My experiences growing up as a first-generation american in a culture that directly conflicts with the pakistani-muslim values that my parents taught me significantly shaped my psychological, social and emotional functioning as an adult. My friends may have been able to sympathize with and appreciate my experiences. However, because these were not experiences that they had ever encountered in their own lives, they were not able to offer empathy, and therefore real understanding. Feeling as though I were not completely understood by the people that I considered my friends created a sense of isolation and non-belonging.

Because of my experiences as a daughter of pakistani-muslim immigrants and because of the values that I absorbed in my parents’ home, I do think differently about certain things than would, for example, a white american woman of the same generation. Although this idea may seem somewhat insignificant, it is actually a monumental realization for me. For so many years, I wondered why this feeling of non-belonging existed even though I was just as american as any of my white american friends. But the real truth is that an american with pakistani-muslim immigrants as parents is not as american as a white american with white american parents. And this is something that I have, for my whole life, either avoided, denied, or was painfully unaware of. I can’t decide which it was. Either way, I am not really who I thought I was.

It has only been until recently that I have really begun to realize the pervasive influence that my parents’ cultural background has had on the person that I am, and that furthermore, my parents’ cultural background is not just theirs’, but MINE as well. As an individual of american birth, I am not as pakistani as my parents are, but I am pakistani nonetheless. What I previously failed to comprehend is that I cannot, and should not, attempt to separate my american identity from my pakistani-muslim identity. They are fused together so tightly within my whole identity that trying to separate them only creates something false. They can all co-exist but simply need to be reconciled with one another.

Eventually, I realized that I needed to connect with people that would understand the experiences that had shaped me into the person that I am. Consequently, I made an amendment to my original ideology of friendship. Even though it remains true that cultural/religious commonalities do not necessarily drive friendships, they can certainly enrich existing ones in ways that other types of commonalities cannot. There is something very comforting about seeing yourself in another individual, and knowing that you are not alone in your experiences.

The result of this 7-year journey is that a long-standing fog has been lifted from my eyes. I can clearly see the root of my isolation now. Taking the abovementioned issues into consideration, I have begun to confront my feeling of non-belonging and to accept myself as an individual that is different from most others around me, but that can always find solace and understanding in my newfound friendships.