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The Magazine
August/September 2010
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August/September 2010
'Identity'
By Robbie Thomson
Let me first of all say something: I am a Northerner! I grew up in and around the North East of England and that means a few things are true about me. I have an unhealthy liking for gravy with everything; I wear little more than a T-shirt on the top of half of my body – whatever the weather! And finally (and probably most importantly) I went to school with someone who appeared in Byker Grove.
Where we grow up has a profound effect on the type of people we grow up to be. Hundreds of years ago, the course of your life and the type of person you were depended wholly on where you lived. If you lived in a mining town, you became a miner. If you lived in a seaside town you became a fisherman....or a surfer. Back then, finding your identity was easy. You were born into it. Nowadays, in the modern world of Youbook and Facetube, finding identity can prove more difficult.
In a world where we have access to whatever we want, we are affected, shaped and moulded by a whole host of things.
Growing up in the North East when I was a child wasn’t the easiest. Adidas popper pants were all the rage, pogs were the weapons of choice on the playground and Chumbawumba was storming the charts.
My life however was far less outlandish. I came from a family that had an unhealthy collection of Barry Manilow and Lesley Garret, I wore kit-kat red dungarees and played with Duplo instead of Lego because my fingers were too fat. I didn’t initially fit in at school; I always seemed to finally catch up with a trend just as everyone else moved onto the next one. I was the VHS tape to their DVD. I seemed to be chasing a sense of belonging, a definition of myself, an identity.
My mind casts back to September 1998. France were the best team in football, the country was floating on a wave of New Labour optimism and the Animal Kingdom at DisneyWorld had just opened to the public. I was 10. A portly, awkward 10 year old. A new school year beckoned and so did the football season. P.E was my favourite lesson largely because it meant I could stand around and chat and because it meant I didn’t have to wear my increasingly tight school trousers. Trousers that had on several inopportune occasions ripped at the crotch for the whole school to see.
However, I digress. I was always picked last for football then largely told to stand out of the way and only kick the ball if there was absolutely no chance of anyone else doing it. I mainly did what I was told. However on that day, while I was counting the blades of grass and trying to find faces in the clouds, I didn’t do what I was told.
The ball wriggled out of a tackle and rolled to me. I leathered it with my Dad’s old Adidas Sambas with the moulded studs. The ball flew from my foot, albeit in completely the opposite direction, and rattled into the back of the net after shuddering the cross bar. I was swamped by my team mates, high more on disbelief than anything else.
My life however was far less outlandish. I came from a family that had an unhealthy collection of Barry Manilow and Lesley Garret, I wore kit-kat red dungarees and played with Duplo instead of Lego because my fingers were too fat. I didn’t initially fit in at school; I always seemed to finally catch up with a trend just as everyone else moved onto the next one. I was the VHS tape to their DVD. I seemed to be chasing a sense of belonging, a definition of myself, an identity.
My mind casts back to September 1998. France were the best team in football, the country was floating on a wave of New Labour optimism and the Animal Kingdom at DisneyWorld had just opened to the public. I was 10. A portly, awkward 10 year old. A new school year beckoned and so did the football season. P.E was my favourite lesson largely because it meant I could stand around and chat and because it meant I didn’t have to wear my increasingly tight school trousers. Trousers that had on several inopportune occasions ripped at the crotch for the whole school to see.
However, I digress. I was always picked last for football then largely told to stand out of the way and only kick the ball if there was absolutely no chance of anyone else doing it. I mainly did what I was told. However on that day, while I was counting the blades of grass and trying to find faces in the clouds, I didn’t do what I was told. The ball wriggled out of a tackle and rolled to me. I leathered it with my Dad’s old Adidas Sambas with the moulded studs. The ball flew from my foot, albeit in completely the opposite direction, and rattled into the back of the net after shuddering the cross bar. I was swamped by my team mates, high more on disbelief than anything else.
I had made it! I was accepted. I walked home that evening, grinning broadly and feeling invincible. I had found a niche. I had found belonging, an identity. I was that kid at school that once upon a time did something special.
The next day rolled by at school, annoyingly with very little acknowledgement. People walked by without saying a word. In an instant that sense of belonging had gone.
I look back on that golden afternoon and think of how desperately I wanted to put a marker down for who I was and what I could do. I wanted people to recognise me and acknowledge me.
The Bible is crammed full of stories of ordinary people just like you and me that struggled with what it meant to be someone or achieve something. In Mark 10 35:45 we read the story of James and John bickering about who would sit at the right hand of Jesus.
"Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left in your glory."
James and John were too preoccupied with wanting to matter. They were too preoccupied with achieving something and being that important person. They had completely lost sight of the bigger picture. I think we sometimes do the same. We’re too eager to achieve and succeed, too keen to nail down who we are and what we can do. The moment we do that we become more concerned about self fulfilment and less concerned about serving God.
This is how Jesus’ responded to James and John:
“Not so with you. Instead, whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant,and whoever wants to be first must be slave of all.For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many."
We must heed that advice. Finding out who we are and what we should be needn’t preoccupy our time. It’s simple. We need to be humble, obedient and servant-hearted. Only then will we really be a person of worth, not in the way the world recognises worth but in the way that truly matters.
As for me, that is a lesson I learnt a few years ago after scoring undoubtedly the greatest goal of all time.
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