Anchor Points

Where I come from, astrology is big deal and this is established the moment you are born. Once you are out of your mother’s womb, an astrologer prepares a paper marking the cosmic coordinates of your birth and this paper stays with you all your life. This paper is a pretty important marker of a person’s identity. It is also somewhat like the I Ching in the sense that people consult astrologers regarding whether a certain life decision would be favorable according to their birth papers. In fact, it’s common practice to get birth papers “matched” in order to decide whether two people should get married. I know that at least in my house, this paper is guarded better than my birth certificate. Sabrina pointed out in class how it is ironic that the birth certificate is such a flimsy paper. Well, this paper is even flimsier. It is handmade. It gets rolled up like an ancient scroll and is wrapped over with a piece of red cloth. I have never taken actually one good look at my birth certificate, but I would be devastated if I were to lose this roll of paper, or if I were to find out that it’s not “authentic.”

What we consider the “anchor points” of our identity, I guess, largely depends on our cultural backgrounds, our history. This becomes relevant in the scope of an alternate world too. In the book The Man in the High Castle, Childan considers the artifacts in his shop to be a mark of his heritage. In a world where his culture had been invaded and was prone to die out, the genuine Americana became his anchor point. If he were in the current world, it is unlikely that would happen. In the alternate world of the book, it is common for people to change names or even their faces. In the current world, our names and our faces would be considered pretty valid anchor points to us.

It just goes on to show how our identities are interlaced with our culture. After all, what is in a name? Why does the authenticity of FDR’s lighter matter? Why do I connect my identity to a roll of paper that has a lot of archaic words that I don’t understand and a bunch of numbers scribbled on a Sudoku-like grid work? Except in the light of culture and history, our idea of identity almost seems arbitrary.