When on a crowded path, the whole world is steering left, the one to steer right establishes his identity. On a rainy day, in the humdrum rush of black umbrellas, the one to carry a red umbrella forges his identity. In the social jungle of human existence, there is no feeling of being alive without a sense of identity.

If we walk the same road as everyone else, we will go no further than our neighbor. If we wish to carve our own unique path, we have to be willing to tread unchartered territory. The true mark of an iconoclast is the ability to walk an untrodden path all alone. One has to have the courage to stand apart from the world and if required to oppose its norms.

But you may ask how do we forge our identity and how do we make it felt?

Forging one’s identity is most certainly about leaving an indelible mark on the world. Gandhi left his mark on the world by peacefully leading throngs of people from Sabarmati to Dandi. Uddham Singh did so by shooting General Dyer in the very heart of Britain. In essence, what we harbor inside our minds and our spirits ultimately colors our imprint. To imbue the world with our imprint, we have to be first true to our essence, to our goals and to our journey so that we don’t deviate from our chosen paths.

What does that mean as students of Delhi World Public School?

It means preserving our identity by being tenacious about our goals. As students, we often have to make choices but sometimes we buckle under peer pressure and we make the wrong choice. It may mean we want to opt for a subject but we don’t, because our friends aren’t opting for it. It may mean we want to participate in an extracurricular activity, but we don’t because no one in the class raised their hand. It may even mean we had plans to study for a test but were tempted to go to our friend’s party. In all these cases, we have to make some difficult choices. A person with flimsy willpower ends up like the flame of a candle, easily tampered with, by a swish of air.

The ability to resist pressure of all forms is the requisite for forging identity. When we toy with a raw egg, we have to be extremely careful given its fragility. However, after being dropped into a cauldron of boiling water, the egg evolves as a strong force to reckon with. The potato, on the other hand, was born a victor. But it caves to the pressure of the boiling water, loses its strength and degenerates to become mellow and squishy.

It’s important to remember that we need to be tenacious about our goals instead of our identity for identity is not set in stone. It is constantly undergoing transformation. Akin to a wave of water that takes unfamiliar sand under its aegis every time it touches the shore, our identities constantly borrow elements from our environment and undergo a metamorphosis. This process of constant metamorphosis is what is called evolution. One who fails to evolve fails to survive. The way we interact with our environment and evolve, largely defines the imprint we leave on the world. If we deviate from our path, we would be no better than the aforementioned boiled potato, mushy and unattractive. However, if we remain tenacious to our goals, we inevitably end up like the hard-boiled egg, tough and resilient, ready to leave our imprint on the world.

History bears witness to the imprints of identity left by those who burn the midnight oil and carry the torch day and night. To those who are easily shaken, a gust of wind is enough to topple.

– Sakshi Goel