An essay by Oskar Manhart
“Nothing of me is original. I am the combined effort of everyone I’ve ever known.”
– Chuck Palahniuk, “Invisible Monsters” (1999)
Today, I will try answering this simple question for myself. In my opinion, this is not a straight-forward task. Answering even such a simple question is more difficult than it seems.
There are a lot of factors shaping one’s identity. But as identity is a very complex construct, one might attempt to break it down into smaller, more easily digestible parts and try to catch but a glimpse of the actual identity. Even though I think this is something fundamentally doomed to fail, I will attempt it anyways.
I will portray myself by presenting the following aspects, in the following order:
- ethnicity / nationality, tradition and my relation to it
- gender identity and gender roles
- importance of family
- religion, values and attitudes
- hobbies
- aims and ambitions
“The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”
– William Shakespeare, “As you like it” (1599)
So to what extent is my ethnicity and nationality important to me and how does it affect my life?
For the uninitiated, I am of Polish-German origin and have a dual citizenship, unlike my younger brother. My mother was born and raised in Poland, but made the decision to attend a German-Polish school at the age of 16. I have Polish relatives (which I will mention again further down the line) and am advanced in spoken Polish, but lack proper grammar and have little to no knowledge of written Polish.
However, I was raised in Germany and speak more German in my day-to-day life. Thus, I feel more German than Polish. Nevertheless, my dual nationality still shaped my identity very much.
As for the importance of all of this: On one hand, I do think it shapes one’s personality fundamentally and staying true to your nationality is important. On the other hand, I feel like speaking a lingua franca like English lessens the importance of your own nationality and just makes you yet another English speaker. Even though I (intentionally) phrased this negatively, I think that being able to speak with tons of different people is a big advantage. However, I do feel like it lowers the importance of one’s nationality.
“I don’t care a damn about men who are loyal to the people who pay them, to organizations…I don’t think even my country means all that much. There are many countries in our blood, aren’t there, but only one person. Would the world be in the mess it is if we were loyal to love and not to countries?”
– Graham Greene, “Our Man in Havana” (1958)
Alright, moving on. Next, I’ll tackle my gender identity and my view on gender roles. Heads up: This section will contain a bit of a personal rant so feel free to skip that.
Personally, I’ve always seen myself as a cis-male (“traditional male”, however, I refuse to refer to myself as that). By the way, if you, the reader, struggle with such terminology, I suggest you read up on this excellent article.
Now, get your pitchforks ready because it’s time to address gender roles. The person who invented them should be very literally backstabbed, like Julius Caesar. I fully understand through our heritage we get taught these kinds of ideas at best unintentionally, but the concept should be ruled out as fast as possible. Just let people do what they want, for crying out loud. Not like it’s any of your business anyways.
“Girls can wear jeans and cut their hair short and wear shirts and boots because it’s okay to be a boy; for girls it’s like promotion. But for a boy to look like a girl is degrading, according to you, because secretly you believe that being a girl is degrading.”
– Ian McEwan, “The Cement Garden” (1978)
Unlike a lot of people I know, I have an excellent relationship with (most) of my family. Like I mentioned earlier, I feel more German because I’ve lived my life in Germany, and for the same reasons I have closer ties with the German side of the family than with the Polish side and I will be referring to them from now on when I refer to “my family”. Anyways, I do have a very large family, by the way. On family gatherings of close family, we easily reach 30 people and my grandmother has 8 grandchildren. Furthermore, the ages between us grandchildren range from 13-19 (besides my youngest cousin which is 7) so we get along very well. This along with having a younger brother and a same aged cousin sister who could as well be my actual sister made me value family very much. I’d definitely like to have a family myself some time.
“I don’t know half of you half as well as I should like; and I like less than half of you half as well as you deserve.”
– J. R. R. Tolkien, “The Fellowship of the Ring” (1954)
The keen-eyed reader might’ve noticed that I have left out “tradition” when talking about ethnicity and nationality. I assure you, I did not forget, this was all intentional. I left it out because a lot of traditions I engage in root in my religion. Be not afraid, for I will not be trying to convert anyone here and I will not talk about my religious views because that just causes unnecessary controversy.
With that out of the way, I’ve been raised as a evangelical-Lutheran Christian and both my brother and I have confirmed our religion and are full members of our local christian community. My father, grandfather and great-grandfather are/were all members of the local community church council “Gemeindekirchenrat”. I believe in God, but like I promised I won’t be elaborating on that.
Anyways, I’ve been raised with modern Christian values. I believe in rationality and that everyone can be good. I value family, loyalty, reliability (including punctuality), peace and independence. I despise hatred, an old family wisdom of ours states: “You should not hate. Hatred is fundamentally bad, it leads to nothing but more hatred”. Also, sometimes the radical solution might just be the best one.
Like I already mentioned, most of these values come from how I’ve been raised; I don’t have a role model.
“Anyone who thinks sitting in church can make you a Christian must also think that sitting in a garage can make you a car.”
– Garrison Keillor, American author and comedian (*1942)
Now, buckle your shoes and call me a nerd because it’s time for something less boring than “values” or “nationality”. I think there’s 2 things that say a lot about a person; their hobbies and if they first put the milk or the cereal into the bowl. Anyways, here’s a non-comprehensive list of things I like to do in no particular order:
- programming
- gardening
- repair work
- systems engineering (working on servers)
- reading (you might’ve noticed this one already)
- playing video games
- indoor rock climbing “bouldering”
- biking
- hiking
- lockpicking
This can be boiled down further to just being a tech enthusiast and reader, who does some other things from time to time, which describes me pretty well.
“A reader lives a thousand lives before he dies, said Jojen. The man who never reads lives only one.”
– George R.R. Martin, “A Dance with Dragons” (2011)
Lastly, I’ll talk about my aims and ambitions. As a tech enthusiast, I’d like to work in that industry. There are several positions I could see myself in which all can be summarised as some sort of software engineering.
Later down the line I’d also like to work in management, notably as a team lead in the fields mentioned above or adviser to higher-level management. Even though it would be less technical work, working in a team is fun and because I’m already gaining experience in sales, marketing and management I would be well suited as the main difference between senior and junior engineers is work experience, besides technical experience and soft skills. I have a few companies lined up where I could apply and I’d also have the option to stay at my current company / spin off the technical department to a own company which I think would also be very interesting.
Since IT jobs are often well paid, money wouldn’t be the primary concern and I always had the attitude that it is always a means, not a goal.
“As much money and life as you could want! The two things most human beings would choose above all – the trouble is, humans do have a knack of choosing precisely those things that are worst for them.”
– J. K. Rowling, “Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone” (1997)
Finally, I’ve gone over all the aspects I’ve wanted to. You’ve now learned a lot about me and hopefully something about yourself too.
Did I answer the initial question? Maybe. Let’s leave it at that. I had a blast writing this essay, and I hope it didn’t end up too boring, although I must say I didn’t expect it to end up being this long. As I’ve started this essay on a quote, I’ll be ending it on one too:
“Make art, make mistakes, and have no regrets.”
– M. L. Rio, “If We Were Villains” (2017)