Hold Your Identity Loosely

"I'm a humanities major and have no technical skills. How should I start a company?" is a question I get from students all the time. There are many possible answers to it (for example, form a team), but I also think, "Do you really need to define yourself that much...?"

Even if you are a humanities major, nothing says you can't study technology, and technology can be learned. For a high school or university student, the difference between specialties amounts to only a few thousand hours at most. Moreover, when it comes to programming, there is even a suggestion that language aptitude matters more than numerical ability, and language is an area in which people generally called "humanities types" tend to be stronger.

Similarly, there are a certain number of students who never consider becoming a business leader from the start, saying, "I'm an engineer, so I don't understand management." But there are quite a few people who started out as engineers and became excellent business leaders.

When it comes to skills, everyone starts as a beginner and grows them gradually. Expertise, too, starts from zero for everyone. Even people who are now famous for playing the guitar were beginners once.

Many of the entrepreneurs I support in the climate tech field did not have expertise in that field to begin with. If anything, more of them started studying the field after they had decided to take it on. If they had given up, thinking "I don't have the expertise," they would have missed a great opportunity.

Of course, people have things they are suited or not suited for. As we get older, our options certainly narrow. Even so, they do not drop to zero, and there are plenty of possibilities.

But if, at such a moment, you define yourself too narrowly or label yourself excessively, saying "I'm an engineer," "I'm a humanities type," or "I'm such-and-such," and turn that into a reason not to act, you close off your own future possibilities.

Hold your identity loosely

In everyday language, we sometimes call our self-perception our identity. Being unable to establish an identity leads to suffering, but on the other hand, holding an identity too strongly is not good either.

In that sense, too, I think we would do better to keep in mind that we should "hold our identity loosely."¹

In other words, it means keeping your identity on the premise that you will change and that you can change.

In fact, people change quite a lot. Compared with yourself ten years ago, there are probably parts that are the same and parts that feel quite different. People change that much, and I think they can change.

Hold multiple identities loosely

If holding it loosely is hard for you, it seems to me that consciously having multiple identities is one option. You might use words such as "dividuals" (bunjin) or plural selves (self-pluralism).

A person can have multiple identities, and if anything, if you can have only one identity, strong anxiety arises when that identity is shaken.²

Professor Kumagaya's words, "independence means increasing the things you depend on," are famous, and I think identity is the same: having multiple identities is probably a way to stabilize yourself. If so, it is never too late to try to have multiple identities, and what matters is to leave yourself open to future possibilities without defining yourself.

Summary

Identity is not innate; you can find it and build it from here on. The self-definition of being "a humanities type" at the beginning is likewise not innate, but just one identity you have cultivated so far.

In that sense, too, I think that not defining yourself too much, and trying to have many identities, is one way of thinking that keeps you open to the future.

Footnotes

1. Paul Graham has an essay on this as well: Keep Your Identity Small. ↩

2. Books such as In the Name of Identity also discuss this. ↩