Self-recognition, Self-Values and Personal Identity

As usual, I hung out with co-workers after work and came home late at night!
Also, like before, we were gossipping others, ourselves and events that happened in the company. And.....again, I felt that there was something I want to express but couldn't say before them.
Getting along with people requires a great technique concerning one's EQ and IQ! You have to decide what you can share and what you can't in order to keep the friendship going.
While we were sharing our studies, Jess made a comment that my major wasn't realistic and unpractical. It was probably true that using a literature major to make one's own living couldn't be much a help. But, I knew how it would enrich my spiritual life and how being a theoretical mind could help me to know myself more.
From our conversation, I realized that people, either men or women are all successively trying hard to find their own places, their own values.

Men were born as a more priviledge gender and have no identity problem for being males. Once the gender identification is clear, what they need is the recognition from the society.
Some search for their own identification and self-values through Politics and compete between themselves for a higher, more respectable status in the society.
Some others are seaching their through a different way.

Like Donny, my potential gay co-worker. I've known him for 4 years and never one day had doubt that he could be gay.
Being homosexual in Taiwan is not like one being in Western country. Especially, if you were born as a male gender that people expected you to be family-responsible for carrying on the family lineage. Even working in a open-minded place like we do, Donny has never admitted in any way around that he is gay. But from the time we shared, all evidence has pointed him with this very inclination.

He is now a graduate student in Tourism. He said, he'd like to do the research on 'The traveling patterns for those who are homosexual! and How they would consider their destinations when going on vacations?'

Also, he talked about how he always felt short when competed with others that were graduated from the universties abroad! (I feel the same way, too! It is all about working-ecology we have here in Taiwan. Taiwanese who graduated from the universities abroad have better chances to get higher hourly pay and they somehow despise people like us. Because we learn our English in Taiwan and have no experience study abroad)

Then, our conversation difted off to one of our coworker, who was from India, but he told our clients that he was from England. How pathetic!
Why couldn't he be honest to who he really was? He has dark skin and most of the time people here recognize him as a Black.
He wasn't the only case, I know. Like what I've mentioned before, there were some Taiwanese coworkers of mine who told people either they were from America or Canada.

Maybe our people who study English in the language center don't know much about western cultures, even though they were all so rich to have been to many countries in the world. But their myth about foreigner in Taiwan are still believing that they are all from the well-developed western countries. Someone like my Indian coworker could have be looked down if he told people he was from India. So, I couldn't judge too much about why he hid his identity.

There were many times when people asked me how I'd learned my English. They thought that my English was good and didn't have much accent compare to others.
When people asked me that, I would start struggling in my heart. I know well, they believe people couldn't have spoken good English if they didn't study abroad. But the thing was I never did. Still, I would tell them the truth that I never had studied abroad. When they got the answer, they would ,first, be surprised and asked me how I'd done that, then there was this paltry, tiny reaction coming out from their eyes that made me felt uncomfortable and very insecure. The thing is, I can't face myself if I denied myself with the part that I really am. I'm proud of how I am even though I never had the experience that people expected.

It is the same as Donny, he is working hard and studying hard in trying to prove to others that he is smart and capable of things as the way he is.

Everyone deserves to be happy and feels content of who s/he is!
Many people are trying hard to recognize themselves without realizing that!
To those who are self-conscious enough to their own identification, are still in the soul-searching quests for a never end.