our sense of identity

as i was sitting in furman halls listening to mr teloh(he's a yankee so we can call him mr teloh) sleepy because i didn't get enought dose of caffein this morning something that he say caught my attention. he was saying how geography,culture and the neighbourhood we live give us a sense of identity. you see lately i was thinking about my identity problem but before this i didn't know this is called empty self which means the meaning of existentence. now i may not be so sure why i exist for but before i can answer my reason of existence i need to ask first who am i? There is a set of identity that i inherit but do i really integrate this set of identity that i inherit? I am first and always a muslim which i am very proud to be. Although i am not religiously follows everything but in a sense yes i am a practising muslim and there is a set of boundary and identity that comes with it. The second i most identify is i am a malay. But i can't figure out what sense am i malay? Am i malay only because my parents have malay inheritance? or because i am malay because i have olive skin? Do i inherit the tradition and really practise it? I don't believe in the concept of extended family and i despise my extended family. Malay as i know identified themselves with family heritage.In my search to become modern i disassociate myself from the tradition,from the traditional role. I refused to be generalised. I refused to accept family history and i refused to acknowledge the stories of my ancestors even though it is painted with colorful color with interesting stories and fact.I refused to believe each time my father told me something about my ancestors. I want to be like other people but at the same time i am losing my inherit identity. I didn't realised that by being a throughly set of modernist i lost all of this. You see my father is the type that loves researching about ancestral root. He goes all over malaysia trying to find lost relative and sometimes along the way he found really interesting story. Sometimes like a fable story you might think.It is a legend but nonetheless you regard it with humor. My father try drumming into my head to remind of me that you cannot run from your past and you have to tell your future generation about the ancestor.If you ask people nowdays how many can tell you exactly where they come from. I can recall the story of my great2 grandfather 7 generation back not because i want to but because my father has been telling this since i was little. Now i have 2 choice: to forget and pretend to my future generation that i don't know anything or i can tell them and they can regard me as a fantastic story teller as i regard my father but they know who they are. This is no simple choice because the choice i make affected their life. I am glad that my father makes the later choice because then i can make choice to accept where i come from and make peace with it or forever ignore about it. I am not sure if i am the only one who is stressing the fact about my malay identity but i feel lost if i don't know anything about it. To grow up believing that being a malay is a shame because malay is identified with lazy,stupid,people who dwelled on the past and much more negative thinking. It is hard for me to finally accept me as a malay and be proud of it. To be modernist is to forsaken our tradition. Are really striving to become a modern society that practise negative rights? negative rights is as long as you don't interfere with me,i am fine with you provided you don't dangers me. Do we really want to be a set of individualist? To be unsatisfied with our life? To not have a sense of we are? Only a few people who can lives with themselves and be satisfied with what they have become? But what about the rest of us who don't have enough strength to create a nestling that is haven enough to be satisfied with what we are? What have we become?