VIRTUE AND IDENTITY

Mikhail bumps into Dave on the Science class corridor. Dave is embarrassed and looks defeated as if someone gave him a thrashing.

Mikhail asks, “Dave, what happened, I seen you talking to Ms. Luten whom you usually don’t speak to?” Dave says, “Mikhail, she told me a terrible thing. I was just saying nice things to her, trying to be warm for a change but I really meant it. She told me that I don’t need to be kind and I should just be myself. What is strange is that she made it sound as if being kind was incompatible with my identity, as if kindness was independent of my identity and I could never be my identity and kind together. She made it feel like I cannot pick and implement kindness like picking and buying groceries in the bag. What is my identity, Mikhail? Am I just trying to add/have virtues to my identity and what happens to my identity?

And Mikhail says:

We all eat the same fruit. The same energy, from the fruit is expended to serve different purposes. Your eating of the fruit is for you to teach me to learn, that guy on the building up there, his eating, is to construct. And that lady in the corner doing a reconnaissance of the building, her eating is to design. But it is the same fruit that makes all possible, that we eat from over which our identities are formed eventually in what we do and engage with.

Virtues are like those fruits. While we all try to be honest, it is the role and manifestation, the pursuit of honesty plays into the specific dynamics of our lives with specific situations and circumstances that all aid in defining our identity. Some pursuits are compromised; some are sacred to us until the end. Some don’t see the light of day and some are kept alive like the breadth of our lives. In the surge and ebb of the tide (of our lives), there always shines forth one tree that defines us no matter what fruits they bear, Identity.