My Cultural Identity Analysis

Waimea, Kauai, the state of Hawaii, the United States of America, northern hemisphere of the world, Earth, our Solar System, the Milky Way Galaxy, the Universe. This is where I’m from, where I was born, where I spent the first eight years of my life. My name, in it’s entirety is Tiffany Katsuyo Go Bayudan. The things that I have gone through in my past have played a big role in the person I am today; and all of these things have been brought on by my environment and my family. These two factors have led to my likes and dislikes as well as, beliefs; this is who I am, this is my definition of my own cultural identity. Though this conclusion, this composition of words on a piece of paper about who I am, was one of the hardest things I had to do.

So Kauai is the place where I grew up, where I had the majority of my key moments. For example, my very first day of school where I told my Mom she could leave before she even walked me into class, to the time I fell while my Dad was pulling me on my bike, all those times we went out to trap pigs at four in the morning, or just went driving around cornfields. Even during my first birthday when I fell asleep and my cousin, Sarina blew out my candles. These events taught me not only how to react in each situation, but giving me the experience, the knowledge of how it felt to be in that moment, so that I could apply it to other situations. Because I lived in a small neighborhood that was looped together, meaning you could drive around in circles past the houses, I was able to go trick-or-treating every year. But here in Kona, I couldn’t do that, as an alternative we went to this Candyland maze thing, that just wasn’t quite as good. The main point is that through this experience I felt a real sense of Halloween and I was also able to get to know my neighbors a little more, which is something I don’t do here. I hardly even know ⅓ of the people living around me in this moment. But in Kauai, I could name almost everyone surrounding me. I also had a lot of animals in Kauai, from a wide variety of birds,

For a long time, it is also the greatest puzzle, the picture of exactly who you are; your likes, dislikes, beliefs, etc.. The origin of all of this is also just as important, knowing what made you, you, will allow others as well as yourself to learn from the person you are, so they can choose to be like you in some ways, and someone else completely in other ways. For me the biggest factors that shaped me so far is my family and my environment; which is basically everything; because to shape a person it takes everything around them. Like with a piece of clay, it is not only what is surrounding the clay that defines its shape, it is also what is surrounding that first outer layer and so on. Life is a domino reaction, one thing causes another to happen, but the main picture is the person it creates I the process. I got everything I am from the world around me, and although I can’t share the entirety of my identity and how I became who I am, because I don’t I don’t fully understand myself, or even what has caused me to become me. I do know from my experiences that your cultural identity can never truly be known inside and out, and it is a constantly changing part of yourself. In the end, the most important thing to know is that the world and everything in it changes who you are, for better or worse, and this cycle of change will never end, everything is constantly changing whether you notice or