The Identity of Self

So what am I, English or Australian? Can I be both or do I have to choose? If I have to choose then why do I have to do so? Is it up to other people to tell us who we are, or are we free to choose our identity?

These are questions for you, because I know who I am. I love Australia; it is the place of my birth, education and growth. However, for whatever reasons, I have never really felt as if I am a part of it. For those who know me, I am not your stereotypical Aussie bloke. I don’t know why I didn’t turn out that way. I just didn’t.

I have both Australian and British citizenship. I have lived in both countries. Between the two, I have always felt closer to England. Maybe it is the realisation that (at least on my father’s side) I am a first generation Australian, and that I have thousands of years of family history and heritage in Britain.

Should I (or you) just ignore our heritage simply because we were born away from our ancestral homeland? If you want to then by all means go ahead, I’m not here to tell you what to do. But for me, I felt that connection to ‘the land’ and to the lives of my ancestors. I realised I wanted to know England – what it was and is, how it got to be the way it is, and above all, what does it mean to be English.

The central question therefore is, can a person of Anglo-Saxon/ British origin be English though not be born there? Of course they can. No one doubted that Jimmy (Christian Bale) in ‘Empire of the Sun’ was English, though he makes it clear that he hasn’t been there yet. This of course brings up the question of what does it mean to be an Australian… But that’s for others to figure out.

Having said all this, my Mum’s family traces much of their ancestry to Scotland. Perhaps I should be talking about a ‘British’ identity for myself, rather than a specifically English one. But again, I feel a connection to England.

And because of that connection, I feel strongly about certain aspects of England’s condition today.