Baha’i Perspectives

Archive for the tag 'identity'

Where do you come from?

negin March 11th, 2008

The question “Where do you come from?” might seem like an easy and straightforward one, a simple question looking for a simple answer. Being of Persian origin, but born and raised in Sweden — a country in which I look foreign — I’m faced with this question quite often. And it always manages to create a degree of hesitation within me. Looking at the world today, I’m sure that I’m not alone.

The question could be interpreted literally and answered accordingly, which in my case would be Sweden, as that is where I was born. This usually doesn’t satisfy the questioner though.

Or I could “play along” and, in my case, say Iran but that isn’t totally the truth either, as I haven’t ever even been there.

What complicates the matter are the indirect implications of my answer. It’s usually not a matter of where I literally came from, but more a question of ethnic origins, and/or perhaps even cultural identity. What people are more interested in is knowing what I identify myself as, which is understandable. The problem occurs when people put me in a “file” depending on what I answer.

Regardless of the benefits or drawbacks of the present-day global economy, this way of thinking is out-of-date, and I know more and more (young?) people are liberating themselves from it. The days when most people strictly belonged to one nationality and one culture are history.

With people moving across borders and continents more and more, generations are arising where one has had the benefit of experiencing so many different cultures that it is impossible to identify with just one of them. Being a mix of several cultures — hopefully taking the best of each — and realizing that people across the world have more in common than the opposite, will make people see themselves less as belonging to a certain nationality, and more as world citizens.

This concept has been beautifully expressed in the Baha’i-writings, revealed almost 150 years ago:

That one indeed is a man who, today, dedicateth himself to the service of the entire human race. The Great Being saith: Blessed and happy is he that ariseth to promote the best interests of the peoples and kindreds of the earth. In another passage He hath proclaimed: It is not for him to pride himself who loveth his own country, but rather for him who loveth the whole world. The earth is but one country, and mankind its citizens.

(Baha’u'llah, Tablets of Baha’u'llah, p. 167)

I’m not so bothered by people asking me where I come from as it may seem. I just hope that I’m not sorted into a file of a “typical Persian” (whatever that is), but rather a person whose identity has been formed by the experiences I’ve been through, may it be Persian, Swedish or simply… a world citizen.