Contextual or Constant Identity?
Chance Godwin
is helping businesses illustrate their big ideas with whiteboard animation.
As a brand or as a person - it’s important to build our identities on something that is constant. Something that doesn’t change with the situation. This is our character. This is what keeps us anchored. We intuitively recognize that integrity is a valuable thing.
Yet the transactional nature of our many relationships in the world requires us have shallow and superficial exchanges with many people every day. This isn’t a bad thing - we simply don’t have time to become best friends everyone we come into contact with.
So we use a persona, a fragment of our total identity to facilitate the exchange. We curate and present the part of ourselves that is relevant to the other person so as not to confuse or distract them from the transaction at hand.
We fall into danger when we present personas to our close friends and allies - concealing our true character and attempting to deceive them.
We fall into danger when we fail to curate our identities with casual acquaintances and enemies, letting our bleeding hearts reveal aspects of our character that are distracting, unhelpful, or even dangerous in certain situations.
In a world of increasing digital transparency, it becomes more challenging and necessary to cultivate both integrity and discretion.