Association of self-identity through your environment
I believe that one of the biggest reasons people identify with certain social groups is because they are heavily invested in them.
So I ask myself, “what weighs most for me”?
For me, that happens to be meaningful experiences.
Each person defines this in their own way but from my experience, exploring oneself has been most meaningful me overall. There are those moments that are very meaningful but of course we also know very well of those very unmeaningful moments as well. Those meaningful moments are extremely important to me so I tend to remember the whole underlying experience better. The environment where this meaningful experience took place will have greater weight in my mind. I am more invested in it.
I’ve been to a good number of camps from different non-profit organizations and I believe that these camps do a good job at bringing many meaningful experiences to all participants, both young and old. Attending these camps, you tend to associate the whole experience as a “good camp” and the title of the camp becomes associated with you. The best camps I’ve been to are the ones where we really had to explore ourselves through various activities. The activities are typically done with a group of people and their backgrounds vary depending mostly on the type of camp that it is. I’ve been to camps where I’ve been surrounded by my peers, friends, club members, and recently, younger kids. Only after attending all these camps do I understand which specific parts of the whole experience were most meaningful.
The most meaningful moments in these camps were the self-discovery sessions with others. Most people who go to these camps do so at their own will so you’re more likely to come across people who are also on the same path. Your experiences with them will play a big part of who you become and their backgrounds will influence most what you learn from them.
What kind of lessons do you want to learn, and who is most likely to have the ones that you wish to seek?
How can you make it more likely that you come across those kind of people more frequently?
What changes in your life have you recently made that pushed you in that direction?
At the end of the day, you end up working hard to become like those people; or better versions of them. If that group of people that you mostly associate to happens to be attributed to a certain title, you run the risk of being placed in that same category of people. Is it worth the risk?
