The Identity Trap

Abstracting identity to achieve open-mindedness

Tribe. It is a powerful word. It evokes pride, belonging, and identity. It can be a profound driver of purpose and fulfillment. And at the same time, it is often a source of division, violence, and pain.

I have been thinking about this in the context of identity. I believe there is a way to hold on to our identities, to nurture our tribes, without becoming so tribal about it.

There is a formal definition of tribe that refers to blood ties or religious affiliation within a society. But for this discussion, I want to use a broader meaning. A tribe is a group of people we identify with for whatever reason. A profession. A faith. A generation. A stage of life.

Identity has been on my mind lately because I am going through several transitions at once.

My wife and I became empty nesters recently. That is a significant shift. We lost several tribes almost all at once. The kids themselves, of course. They are not gone, but they are no longer woven into our daily lives the way they were for nearly twenty years. We also lost the orbit around them. Soccer games. Family dinners. Camping trips. The rituals that quietly structure a life.

At the same time, my industry, software engineering and consulting, is changing rapidly. Adapting to that shift forces me to reconsider what it even means to be an IT consultant. And I am nearing the big 5.0. No matter how often I tell myself that age is just a number, this milestone feels more daunting the closer it gets.

With all of that changing, I found myself asking what, exactly, was being lost.

The more I reflected on these identities that seemed to be slipping away, parent of young kids, traditional software engineer, young adult, the clearer it became. I was losing circumstances, not identity.

Two concepts from my field helped me make sense of this. First, the concept of an interface. It defines a contract, and specifies the behaviors something must support, but it does not dictate how those behaviors are implemented. Second, the concept of a class, which by contrast is a specific implementation. It fulfills the contract in a concrete and particular way.

Think of a piece of music. The score defines the notes, the timing, and the structure. That is the interface. An orchestra performs it. They honor the structure, but their instruments, tempo, and emotional tone make the performance uniquely theirs. That is the implementation, the class.

I have come to believe that the healthiest version of identity is an interface, not a class.

That does not mean the contract itself is negotiable or infinitely flexible. An interface still defines something real. The commitments must be durable. The principles must hold. The flexibility lies in how those principles are lived, not in whether they are lived at all. Without a stable contract, there is no identity. There is only drift.

When identity becomes a class, it gets fused to a specific set of circumstances. It becomes rigid. If the circumstances change, the identity feels threatened.

If my identity as a parent were tied to the specific stage when my kids were small and living at home, I would have lost that identity many times already. I would have lost it when they stopped being babies. I would have lost it when they became teenagers. I would have lost it the day they moved out.

If my identity as a problem solver were tied to the specific tasks I performed as an individual contributor, I would have lost it twenty-five years ago when I became a lead and started managing teams instead of writing code myself.

If my identity as a young adult were tied to my twenties, that one would have expired a long time ago too.

But none of that happened.

Because my identities are interfaces. They are not rigid classes frozen in time. They define commitments and principles, but they allow the implementation to evolve.

As a parent, the contract might be love, guidance, availability, and nurturing. That contract can be implemented through bedtime stories and soccer practice. It can also be implemented through phone calls and text messages.

As a software engineer, the contract might be solving problems, building systems, and helping others think clearly about technology. That contract can be implemented by writing code by hand. It can also be implemented by leading teams, designing architectures, or even telling an AI what code to generate.

As a young person, the contract might be curiosity, openness, and a willingness to change. That does not require a young body. It requires a certain posture toward the world.

At the same time, not all identities are chosen, and not all can be shed through reinterpretation. Some identities are inherited through circumstance and cannot be separated from the events that formed them. Nothing I am writing here suggests that a widow can simply choose not to be a widow, or that a person can step outside the lived realities that shaped them.

Thinking of identity as an interface can extend to our tribal affiliations as well.

I am not religious myself, but many of the religious friends and family members I connect with most easily are those who treat their faith as an interface. For them, religion is a vehicle for deeper principles such as compassion, humility, discipline, and service. It is not a rigid class that claims exclusive access to truth.

It is not difficult to see how much conflict arises when identity becomes fused to a particular implementation. When the specific expression of a belief, a job, a culture, or a stage of life is mistaken for the essence of the identity itself.

The Identity Trap is believing that everything about how we live must stay the same in order for who we are to remain the same.

If we instead ask a different question, the perspective shifts. What is the contract? What are the principles that this stage of life is implementing? If we understand that, then we can hold the contract firmly and the implementation lightly.

And if we can do that for ourselves, it becomes easier to do it for others. We can begin to see that their religion, their family structure, their job, or their culture may simply be a different implementation of principles we also value.

That shift alone might change how we see ourselves. It might also change how we see each other.