“Who are you?” seems like an easy question to answer, but it’s often more difficult to sum up who you are quickly. Do you talk about where you were born and raised, or do you talk about work? Your hobbies, faith (or lack of faith), and other things that define you? Favorite foods, music, movies, and other things? We kick off this episode with this very question and discover that it’s not so easy to sum up one’s identity in an elevator speech.

Childhood undoubtedly plays a huge part of one’s identity. We spend some time discussing the one experience from early in our lives — more than any others — that is responsible for who we are today. Next, we talk about other influences on who we are and what effect those influences have had on how we carry ourselves today…and how we interact with others.

Some people carry physical identifiers of who they are on their bodies. We talk about the tattoos we have, what they mean to us, and if we’d like to get more. From there, we ask if individuality is a western ideal — a bigger thing in America than in other countries? History is full of countries that attempted to stifle individuality. Is there an advantage of a society that puts more stock in everyone together for everyone, or does it take a nation of individuals to make a nation work best?

Individuality is an ever-changing thing, even if one can be — on some level — the same good or bad person they’ve been since they are young. Even into adulthood, asking “What do you want to be when you grow up?” can bring what matters most to us to the surface. We ask each other what we still aspire to be. (It’s a rare moment when something we say is something we believe should be what everyone aspires to be, but it’s safe to say we both believe that Shawn’s answer to this question should be everybody’s answer.)

We wrap it all up asking each other is we turned out how we thought we would. Find out if we became the people our childhood selves thought we’d be…

As always, we’d love to hear your answers to any of the things discussed in this episode. Let’s start with “Who are you…?”

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