Identity Crisis

"But what about my tattoo?!"

Today, practically everyone in the country had a 5-minute identity crisis when word started circulating that the zodiac calendar had changed because of a tilt of the world's axis over the past 5,000 years...or something to that effect.  Facebook statuses freaked out about the sudden change in identity, until some more informed zodiac followers commented with various excuses about why people's signs had not changed, whether because people were born before 2009 or because Westerners use some sort of tropical zodiac.  Whatever.  It really doesn't interest me all that much...the whole zodiac controversy is like a pothole that momentarily affects your drive, but then you never think about ever again.

But let's just focus on that pothole for a second.  Because for 5 minutes this morning...I was a Taurus.

I've spent the bulk of my life being a Gemini, and apparently shall spend the rest of my life being a Gemini.  Geminis are extroverted, witty, materialistic, and superficial, and often flit from thing to thing and flirt with everything they see.  But they are also intelligent and good communicators.

"Like, what's your sign, like?"

My mental image of a Gemini has always been one of a Barbie-esque party girl who hangs out at the beach and asks guys "What's your sign?" in a seductive voice just so she can answer that she's a Gemini, the ultimate cliche zodiac sign.  Even though I really find the zodiac to be a bunch of nonsense and wholly ineffective as a source of guidance (it was invented by the Babylonians, who are all dead now), I have always been a bit annoyed that my sign is Gemini.  Witty, intelligent, and communicative I'll accept; all that flirty, flighty, superficial junk I could do without.

But this morning, all of a sudden I was a Taurus - stable, hardworking, peaceful, calm, and emotional with the occasional outburst of anger, and unfortunately stubborn, jealous, and controlling.  But good with money.  And much less cliche than the Gemini.

Now the Taurus has many traits I'd like to have in my adult life.  All that stable and hardworking and peaceful calm and whatnot...sounds pretty good.  And I'm quite capable of being jealous and stubborn, although these may not be the most attractive of qualities.  Besides that, the Taurus's symbol is a bull, a symbol of strength and power...the Gemini sign is twins.  TWINS...to me that implies a psychological disorder or a narcissistic worldview; why else would you want to double yourself?  (Note: this doesn't apply to real-life twins, who are quite lovely people and two SEPARATE people...so take no offense, Whitney and Laurie).  So in the five minutes I dedicated to googling zodiac personality descriptions, I was somewhat happy for the shift.

And then all the hardcore zodiac-ers showed up and informed me that, never fear, I am still a cliche, flighty party girl with a split personality.  Crap.

What I find most intriguing about this ultimately non-consequential non-change is the amount of drama it seemed to cause everyone.  Even though most people I know don't believe in the zodiac, I wonder if maybe, on some subconscious level, the reason people were freaking out was because they were suddenly being told that they were somebody else.  On some fundamental level, I think the whole zodiac thing got to people because it hit on their need to understand their identity.

People (myself included) spend a lot of their life on the great quest of self-discovery, hoping to answer the ultimate question: Who am I?  In all reality, a person who doesn't believe in the zodiac shouldn't be at all affected by the news that the signs are changing.  But people were flipping out.  It boils down to something that happens all the time: society telling people who they should be...and telling people that they are something other than who they understand themselves to be.

Something I've often thought about lately is how I define my identity.  I've realized that, a lot of the time, I define my identity in relation to other people or in relation to the circumstance at hand.  As I've told several people, I haven't really felt truly like myself since last May.  Celia at her finest is strong, intelligent, confident, outgoing, well-liked, capable, and optimistic.  Last year, all of these things came to fruition as I was in an environment where I was comfortable being precisely myself, without hindrance or trepidation.  Out of the familiar, am I really the same person?  Each of those traits has felt challenged since I moved to Texas to start grad school.  In these new circumstances, I often feel perpetually weak, unprepared, intimidated, shy, ignored, and overwhelmed.

Yet, I am the same person I was last year.  Why is it that circumstances can so affect our identity?  Why should my identity be influenced by anything but who I want to be, and who I understand myself to be?

Certainly, circumstances can evolve to change one's identity...like, if I suddenly became a parent, obviously there would be some identity shifting going on.  That sort of change isn't necessarily what I'm talking about here.  I mean who we each are in our basic human personalities, and our confidence in claiming our personality as a valid means of existing.

I'd like to be confident enough in who I am that my identity isn't challenged by society, that I don't feel like I have to be someone I'm not.  I want to define who I am, not leave it up to someone else.

So in the end, does it matter if I'm a Gemini or a Taurus?  Not so much.  What does matter, I think, is whether I'm being Celia, and not trying to be somebody else.  Like Judy Garland said, "Always be a first-rate version of yourself, instead of a second-rate version of somebody else."