Ilya shared his three identities with me as ‘Interested’, ‘Values’, and ‘Anchored’. I found it interesting that much of his conversation was about others: about how he worked to help others discover, or follow, a path. As he says, ‘to get off the wall and do something’. This became clear as he described his journey from the listless uncertainty of a teenager, to the confidence and self assurance that has come through more than three decades of military service.
In common with other Identity Stories so far, Ilya does not use his ‘job’, the thing he is paid for, as a direct descriptor of his identity, although it is clearly a thread throughout the story. More than anything, i had the sense of a person at peace with their identity: pragmatic (in the description of how he experienced cancer) and open.
Ilya’s Identity Story
My three identities are ‘Interested’, ‘Values’, and ‘Anchored.
I hold an irrepressible interest in other people: in how they develop, how they can seek and find the most potential in themselves. This is shaped by my childhood. I did not have much in life to start with. Many people my age would sit on the wall, with no movement or momentum. At some point i made the decision to get off the wall and do something. To take an interest in life. And that’s really important.
Values are important to what i do. Not simply to say which values are ‘right’ or ‘wrong’, but there must be a value set around a person. It’s a bell curve: they do not all have to be in the centre, but they must be within a range. My values frame who i am, and in the military they frame our action.
To be Anchored is an important identity for me: i have seen so many people who do not have anchors. It’s a word i have used more latterly in my life, because i have increasingly seen the benefits. There has to be something that anchors you into things.
I have found these things over time. We say ‘the wise man who is older…’ you just recognise some of these things when you get there.
Perhaps you need the experience of life to pick it up?
It comes from having had the time to think about these things. There is something in us i think about needing an opportunity to reflect.
There is some cross over between these identities: Values and Anchors are linked, they cross over, they must be compatible. You have to be interested in those who anchor you, externally, but inwardly we face our values.
I suppose they could work in isolation or even sometimes against each other.
I see this in the work i have done in prisons: people are sentenced and serve their time. They could rejoin society. But sometimes their values, and hence behaviours, take them back down an old path. I find myself thinking ‘Come on, you’ve served your time, surely you want to join the rest of us’. But sometimes they don’t.
The way my own values cross over? Well, the trite answer would be ‘my wife knows more about me than anyone else’. Do we sit and codify it? Probably not. We don’t comment on the detail. But she knows me. People at work, probably less so. In the last couple of months, having moved into a civilian space, i really enjoy being with people who are not in the framework i come from. I like being in this space.
My military environment, through the formative years, it shapes you so much. These early years of our lives, they somehow overwrite the next forty! You can leave some characteristics behind, some of it, but you are shaped at the start.
In many ways i would say that my work identity is similar to my other identities, but the degree of emphasis is weakened a bit. In my work i am interested in people, and people often say that it’s great working with me, i think because i have this interest in them. Because i am genuinely interested in them.
But at work, in the military, there are structures that prevent you being totally interested. There can be a tension: i may ultimately be their boss. I may have to discipline them. I know that somewhere down the line we may end up with that tension.
I suppose people would say ‘you must be institutionalised’, and i suspect i have some characteristics - but i do see myself as a person in society who happens to be in the military - because it works for me - the ethics and what people do - but i don’t see myself as primarily a military person. Rather i am a person in the military.
The way i see our military is perhaps something i have seen all my life: that when there is a bully around, someone has to step up to them. And i happen to wear a military uniform to do it.
If you asked someone to draw and define a military person, i would not relate myself to how they describe it.
Being in the military does have an impact on your identity, it shuts some spaces or aspects down, but equally opens other up. When you go through basic training it shuts down your space to be different, but once you are in, it opens up other spaces. It shapes you: to be elitist, but not in a bad way. It gives you the opportunity to do the best you can do.
I don’t think you can own your identity entirely yourself: there needs to be societal acceptance, or work values. Maybe there are a whole range of identities or diluted identities as others see you. Can you own these projections? No. There is so much context around it.
My identity today is the best so far, probably because i own my own time now, and nobody can do anything to me! I am at a place in my journey where i have independence.
Group identity is a frame, not a foundation. Some of the frame leaks into the foundation over time. For example, i like being elite, but it was not my starting point.
Is identity a belief, or real? Is there a difference? Probably there is, because people lie: they project a different identity to the real one. I think you do have an identity, aspect of which that you own (constructed through context) that allows you to get to a point where you are most comfortable. When context is at it’s loosest. You just go with the flow through those busy years - maybe at my age you find the comfort and space to explore.
My identity gives me a resilience: i went through the Falklands war, and came out ok. Some people really struggled, but something in me was just grounded. These words: to be anchored, values, to have that interest, these somehow have given me a resilience.
I am not the same person that i was when i was a child, when i took my first employment at seventeen and a half. Lots of me is similar, but i did not have the anchors that i have now. Some of my values have become clearer too.
The wings make you proud, but you know you are not really different. It was a framework in which i was comfortable, but it was not the basis of my identity. Which is why i am not worried about leaving the military.
My identity is specifically previous to me:i am more interested in doing the right things. I don’t use titles because i am not at a place where i need other people to know that i have it.
My identity is not particularly linked to my physical body: there were blips in my life, surviving cancer, things to get over and move on from. I did not get involved in any organisations to get help. What is more dominant for me is what i do now.
I have a bit of a fatalistic view: i remember in the Falklands hearing things go bang, the dirt flying. It’s not uncomfortable for me to think about this: it’s good to try to tease things out. I did find it cathartic to write about it, a kind of chronology.
I genuinely feel that we each have potential, all the time: not just at eighteen years old, getting exams. We just need help to unlock this potential.
I always think of the impact i can have on the individual. And how i can work on that impact.