RELATIONSHIPS AND IDENTITY 

Listening 1’s topic is how the relationships with other people influence the identity of a human being. In particular, it makes me think about how the relationships and the contexts contribute to create a human identity. 

First of all, it must to be said that the human being, as Aristotle claimed, is a social animal: by its very nature, he or she needs to socialize with others because he or she wants to live in harmony with them.So, since birth, the human being tends to create relationships and at first, children come into contact with their parents. In the first years of life, as long as the child does not go to school, they represent the only points of reference. Children are totally dependent on their parents, they see the world through their parents’ eyes because they are totally under their parents’ control and they see them as their point of reference, as a model to follow. Based on how parents behave towards their children and the teachings they give them, the identity that children begin to create is influenced by this. For example, a child who has lived a harmonic relationship with his parents that have been kind but at the same time strict, he may have grown safely. In addition, the way each of us has lived the relationship with the own parents in the first six years of life affects also the way he will live the future relationships with other people. 

Going on, the moment when children start going to school represents the first symptom of personality’s change because children’s horizons broaden: they meet new people such as teachers and classmates and so they develop new relationships. In particular, parents are no longer the only points of reference because also the teachers are now important authorities. But when kids become teenagers the relationships with parents becomes even more complex.Indeed, they start arguing with parents and demanding more independence. They also tend to be a part of a peer group and the influences may be positive or negative. For example, they can learn how to be sociable or they can find people who stand by them, but, on the other hand, they can do irresponsible acts, such as smoking or vandalism, developing a negative identity. In particular, the negative influences depend on the education received from the parents. 

So, as the guy grows up, the importance he gives to the reference figures changes, especially when he is a teenager because he wants to be more independent from the parents who, while at the beginnings they represent the most important figures, as the son grows up, they are joined by other people that come into contact with the son: the teachers and the peers . Therefore, while in the childhood the main and unique reference figures are the parents, when children go to school, they are also the teachers and then there are the peers who play an important role in the identity. 

To conclude, a human being creates his or her own identity based on the relationship of he or she with other people and so the personality created as the human being grows up, does not born only with the question “Who am I?” or “What I would like to be?”, but also “Who am I in relationship with others?”. Indeed, the identity can be defined mainly by relating us to others, so one finds oneself better by comparing oneself with other people. Therefore, the main message of the listening activity is that the creation of an identity depends on the contexts and the people with which the human being comes into contact.