The Compass: The Roots We Carry, the Person We Become
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Every journey begins before we are aware that we have started it. We arrive in a family, a language, a culture, and a place we did not choose. We inherit names, memories, traditions, expectations, and ways of seeing the world. Before we can ask who we are, much of our identity has already begun to take shape around us.

I am Egyptian. That simple statement carries more than a nationality. It carries a language, a history, a way of welcoming people, a deep connection to family, and memories formed in places that have shaped my understanding of life. It carries the sounds of home, the habits I learnt without being taught, and the values that became part of me long before I had the words to describe them.

These roots matter. They give us a sense of belonging. They remind us that we did not begin alone, and that our lives are connected to people and places that came before us. Yet roots are meant to nourish a tree, not prevent it from growing. They should give us strength without becoming walls. We can love where we come from without believing that everywhere else is somehow less worthy. We can celebrate our culture without using it to diminish another. We can feel pride without needing someone else to feel smaller.

Over the years, I have come to understand that identity is not only what we inherit. It is also what life reveals to us, what relationships teach us, what questions disturb us, and what choices we make when nobody is watching. The person I was in my twenties is not exactly the person I am today. I carry him with me, but I have also questioned him, forgiven him, and grown beyond some of the beliefs he once held so tightly.

There were things I accepted simply because they were familiar. There were expectations I followed because I wanted to belong. There were habits I mistook for values, and sacrifices I confused with love. As I moved through different industries, responsibilities, relationships, and seasons of life, I began to notice how much of my behaviour had been shaped by the desire to be accepted, respected, or needed.

That realisation was not always comfortable. It asked me to look again at the person I thought I was. Was I acting from conviction, or from fear? Was I choosing a path because it was right for me, or because it was the path others expected me to follow? Was I protecting my identity, or protecting an image of myself that I had become afraid to lose?

The journey inward did not give me all the answers. It gave me better questions.

I began to understand that identity is not a finished statue. It is more like a living conversation between our past and our future. We are shaped by our experiences, but we are not prisoners of them. We may not choose every circumstance that enters our lives, but we can choose how we respond. We can decide what to carry forward, what to leave behind, and what to transform.

This became especially clear when I reflected on my professional life. For years, I believed that being useful meant saying yes, taking responsibility, and quietly doing more than was expected. I took pride in supporting others, solving problems, and helping people grow. Those qualities were genuine, but over time I realised that I had sometimes allowed them to become a way of disappearing from my own life. I helped others find their direction while neglecting my own roots.

Eventually, I had to ask myself whether self-sacrifice was always generosity, or whether some of it was also fear. Perhaps I was afraid that if I stopped being useful, I might no longer feel valuable. Perhaps I had built part of my identity around being the person others could rely on, while forgetting that I also had the right to need support, rest, recognition, and care.

That question changed something in me. I began to see that becoming ourselves is not always about adding more qualities. Sometimes it is about releasing the roles we have carried for too long. It is about discovering the difference between who we truly are and who we have learnt to perform.

This does not mean rejecting our past. Our history deserves understanding, not contempt. The family that raised us, the culture that shaped us, and the experiences that formed us all belong to our story. But belonging to a story does not mean that every chapter must control the next one.

We can honour the wisdom we inherited while questioning the limitations that came with it. We can keep the hospitality, the loyalty, the respect, and the care for family, while gently challenging the fear of difference, the pressure to appear strong, or the belief that asking for help is a weakness. We can remain connected to our roots while allowing our lives to grow in directions that our younger selves could never have imagined.

This is why identity becomes more meaningful as we grow older. When we are young, we often ask, “Who am I?” Later, we begin to ask a deeper question: “Who am I becoming?”

The first question seeks a definition. The second invites responsibility. Who am I becoming through the way I speak to people? Through the way I respond when I am disappointed? Through the way I treat someone who cannot offer me anything in return? Through the choices I make when success is available at the cost of my values? Through the things I refuse to learn because they challenge the person I have always believed myself to be?

Our identity is revealed not only in what we claim, but in what we repeatedly practise. It is present in our habits, reactions, relationships, and the small decisions we make when the world is not paying attention.

A person may describe themselves as kind, but identity is shaped through the moments when kindness is inconvenient. Someone may speak proudly of their culture, but identity becomes richer when pride is accompanied by curiosity and respect. A leader may call themselves responsible, but that identity is tested when taking responsibility means admitting a mistake rather than protecting an image.

We become what we practise, but we can also become what we are willing to learn. That is one of the gifts of encountering people whose lives, cultures, and experiences differ from our own. They do not necessarily take anything away from our identity. Sometimes they help us see it more clearly. They show us that the way we have always done something is only one way among many. They invite us to separate what is truly valuable from what is merely familiar.

This is not a call to become less Egyptian, less British, less Australian, less Dutch, or less connected to wherever we call home. It is a call to become more fully human within our identity. The strongest identity does not need to close its doors. It has enough confidence to listen, enough humility to learn, and enough generosity to welcome.

We do not need to abandon our roots to make room for others. We only need to stop treating identity as a competition.

One person’s belonging does not threaten another person’s belonging. One culture’s beauty does not require another culture to be dismissed. Difference does not have to become division. Like instruments in an orchestra, our distinct voices can create something together that none could create alone. Unity does not mean that every instrument sounds the same. It means that each one contributes to a larger harmony.

In my own journey, writing has become one of the ways I continue to discover who I am. I once imagined writing as something I had left behind, a dream belonging to a younger version of myself. Yet the desire returned later in life, quietly at first, and then with enough persistence that I could no longer ignore it. I began writing articles, then books, and eventually became a columnist for “Sabah Al Khir Magazine,” a publication I had once admired from a distance.

That experience taught me something important about identity. Sometimes a part of us remains alive beneath the responsibilities and expectations of daily life. It waits patiently until we are ready to recognise it.

Becoming ourselves may not mean becoming someone entirely new. It may mean returning to something true that we had forgotten.

Yet, even that return is not a return to the past. The writer I am today is not the young man who first discovered the joy of words in a classroom. I carry the same love of writing, but life has given it more depth. Pain has changed what I notice... Failure has changed what I value… Relationships have changed what I understand... And Time has changed the questions I want to ask.

The person I am becoming is still connected to the person I was, but he is not limited by him.

Perhaps this is the quiet freedom at the heart of identity. We are allowed to grow without betraying our origins, we are allowed to change our minds without erasing our history, and we are allowed to become more compassionate, more curious, honest, and open than we were before.

Our identity should be a foundation, not a fortress. It should help us stand firmly enough to welcome others, rather than make us so afraid of change that we can only defend ourselves. It should give us a place from which to contribute, not a reason to withdraw. Belonging gives us roots, but contribution gives those roots purpose.

The question is not only where we belong. It is also what we bring to the place, the people, and the world to which we belong. Do we bring understanding or suspicion? Do we bring healing or further division? Do we make room for others to become themselves, or do we demand that they become more like us?

Perhaps the most honest identity is not a declaration that says, “This is who I am, and I have nothing more to learn.” It is a quieter statement, “This is who I am, and I am still open to discovering what I can become.”

I am still Egyptian. I am still shaped by my family, my language, my memories, my failures, my dreams, and the places that have held my life. But I am also shaped by every question that has softened me, every experience that has challenged me, every person who has helped me see differently, and every choice that has brought me closer to the values I want to live by.

Identity is not something we simply possess. It is something we live into, and the deepest question is no longer, “Who am I?” It is this “Who are we becoming together?”