Expos paper 2
Expository Writing
Jesse Hoffman
October 5, 2014
Puzzle of Identity in Life
Every human’s life is like a puzzle: starting from birth to death, all the people and all the experience that we go through will impact our future decisions and will result in a final product of our identity. Just as all the pieces of the puzzle come together to reveal a final product or an image, our past experiences come together to reveal our final product, which is our identity: who we are and what our beliefs are. The effects of past experiences and encounters will reflect the actions and connections of the present. This adventure of finding ones identity by completing the figurative puzzle requires intimate connections and memorable moments that you cherished. However, this seems to be the issue for people who have gone through a traumatic situation. As the author of “When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning It Was Friday” Martha Stout explains, that victims of traumatic situations are unable to form strong relationships. The lack of strong relationship is caused by the unavailability of the individual mentally, while it actually occurs. Stout refers to this phenomenon as dissociation, where the mind splits itself from the physical body to protect the individual’s sanity. Ironically, the function designed to protect the individual at the moment of the trauma to maintain sanity, is what restrains him/her from forming intimate relationships hence leaving them unable to form an identity. This brain mechanism triggers the mind to disassociate, even when there is no real danger in presence and causes the individual to miss the important parts of his or her life, simply because they are mentally not present for it. This lack of connections and memory of the past events causes the person to question his/her sanity. Not having a past and a history which makes us who we are, seems to be an issue for this generation’s young women. In her essay, “Selections from Hard to Get: Twenty – Something
Jesse Hoffman
October 5, 2014
Puzzle of Identity in Life
Every human’s life is like a puzzle: starting from birth to death, all the people and all the experience that we go through will impact our future decisions and will result in a final product of our identity. Just as all the pieces of the puzzle come together to reveal a final product or an image, our past experiences come together to reveal our final product, which is our identity: who we are and what our beliefs are. The effects of past experiences and encounters will reflect the actions and connections of the present. This adventure of finding ones identity by completing the figurative puzzle requires intimate connections and memorable moments that you cherished. However, this seems to be the issue for people who have gone through a traumatic situation. As the author of “When I Woke Up Tuesday Morning It Was Friday” Martha Stout explains, that victims of traumatic situations are unable to form strong relationships. The lack of strong relationship is caused by the unavailability of the individual mentally, while it actually occurs. Stout refers to this phenomenon as dissociation, where the mind splits itself from the physical body to protect the individual’s sanity. Ironically, the function designed to protect the individual at the moment of the trauma to maintain sanity, is what restrains him/her from forming intimate relationships hence leaving them unable to form an identity. This brain mechanism triggers the mind to disassociate, even when there is no real danger in presence and causes the individual to miss the important parts of his or her life, simply because they are mentally not present for it. This lack of connections and memory of the past events causes the person to question his/her sanity. Not having a past and a history which makes us who we are, seems to be an issue for this generation’s young women. In her essay, “Selections from Hard to Get: Twenty – Something