Where does personality come from? Does it just come to us in our imagination or is it something that comes from DNA? One evening I was talking with a really good friend of mine. He was adopted, and he said that when he found his birth mother and family that a lot of questions about himself seemed to be answered. Are we destined to be who we are from birth or are there choices that we make? The all time most confusing question of all time: nature or nurture? What makes us who we are? What inspires us? Does it come from within or is it experience? I've always believed we all make choices--nurture. But, as I've gotten older, I have to admit that nothing is so black and white, and the reality is not quite so simple. Life is not just nature or just nuture--life is a series of choices. But how much is nature and how much is nuture?
Using myself as the example, as I almost always do in my blogs, I'm the epitome of oxymorons. I'm a girly girl who loves being a tomboy. I'm an engineer, but I love to dabble in sociology type analyses of how people interact, how different personalities can work together and how society, groups, clicks impact our interactions, trials and tribulations. I expect things to fail and plan on contingencies--again, not really an engineering type personality. Yet, I'll analyze something to every nook and cranny of the mind, the interactions, reactions, causes and effects. I'll also pick an endpoint, a goal and/or an achievement point and call it a day. I'm always "one of the boys" which most would think would make it really easy to have a healthy, wonderful relationship with a man, but ironically has proven to make it more difficult than easy. I'm headstrong, directed, an over-achiever. I'm also someone who can and will change my mind under a healthy debate where my opposition can give valid reasoning, logical intent for their determination, and a sound argument why my own analysis is wrong.
Is it nature? My father was one of the greatest minds. Seriously. He could do complex calculations in his head that engineers now expect a computer to complete. He could picture things move, motion, probably even at a molecular level. Daddy was a headstrong mule at times, and most certainly when he was right. A no nonsense person who would always try to do what was right, he made himself a very well respected man in his field and in his personal interactions. Last year when Daddy passed, the one thing that impacted me most wasn't the family that I hadn't seen in years, not how wonderful my baby brothers had turned out, not what a wonderful woman my stepmother had been for my father--although all these things did mean a lot to me. But it was the men who started showing up from 4:30 in the afternoon to 7 in the evening. Men who were coated in dust from demolitions work, electricians, masons, plumbers, painters, construction site guys who most would least expect to show up at a consulting structural design engineer's funeral. A story one of them told me was of how my father, like most consultants, would treat the management, the supervisors, the engineers, to lunch. This isn't surprising to anyone I'm sure. My father obviously made his living by these men and women seeking out his experience and knowledge and paying for it. But, this gentleman, roughly 10 years my senior explained to me that my father always bought lunch for all the workers at the site also. He treated them as if they were equals, not so with most other consultants or even their own management. However, my father never treated anyone as less or more; Daddy viewed all as equal. If I had ever wondered where that desire to treat all equal came from, well, if nature, I have my answer since my father and I had a strained and very distant relationship for several years. My headstrong attitude, the strength that has gotten me through some very rough patches, the desire to treat all equally--these things that are all a very large part of who I am--may have all been simply nature.
Still the dedication, the honesty, the commitment to keep my promises...all of this was already there if we follow the nature, but there was a time that I wasn't that dedicated, I wasn't as honest as I could've been, and commitment was not one of my fortes. As a teenager, I was too angry and lost to be dedicated. I was smart as a whip, but had zero, zilch, nada on the dedication side. As my high school physics teacher worded it in my yearbook, "the most gifted and talented physics student (he) ever had that put absolutely no effort into it at all." That was me. No effort. Dedication was not me. Two days of this or that and I was bored and ready to move on. Honesty, well, sometimes I was--to a fault. And yet, like any other teenager who hasn't realized the impact of their actions, I wouldn't always give honesty a thought. Not that I'd describe myself as dishonest, but it wasn't a fundamental part of who I was--more of an afterthought. Commitment, well bar my commitment phobia that I still suffer from in personal relationships, was not as it is to me now. Today, if I make a promise to someone, my word is my bond. I do not respect people that go back on their word--not that I hold it against them--not all of us see our word as our bond anymore. We choose not to make those commitments, or to break them. It's not nature; it's nuture. We decide. I cannot place a timeframe on exactly when my word became my bond. I know that it was between 19 and 22. I cannot say that something just clicked like a switch going off. It just happened over time. Perhaps a series of fortunate events; perhaps the right mentors. A bad breakup with perhaps the one true love I'd ever had, a professor who wasted a lot of time on convincing me I had talent of some sort, joining the navy, a senior chief who I served with, a master chief who gambled on my abilities, an unsolicited letter of recommendation for an officer's program from my commanding officer. Regardless, my dedication, honesty and commitment are all very intrinsic to who I am now. I believe the ability to be dedicated, honest and have commitment to oneself and others is in all of us. While I believe the intrinsic basics to be honest, committed, and dedicated is in all of us, I believe it is nurture that ensures that intrinsic nature is not overriden by other dynamics of our personalities. It is our own choices; it is who we are if we want to be. It is only difficult if we refuse to make the right choices--which brings us right back to nuture. Nuture is not only the guidance and examples that we are given or receive, but also the choices that we ourselves choose to make.
Personality is an odd word when you think about it. It's a "personal" thing. No two people, even identical twins, have the same personal-ity. There are plenty of methods to analyze a personality--Briggs-Myers, Enneagram, Jungian, Freudian, the four box,... suffice to say we can box each other up as much as we like. Even with these, and even if the modeling is close, it's a fact that sociology, the interaction with others, can have as much and in some cases more impact than the base personality of an individual. Choices, environment, confidence, peers, morals, mindset, emotional stability, trust--all of these and more can cause each of us to react one way or another. Perhaps, we do a great injustice to people when we say that it's nature. People that are abused honestly don't generally turn into psychopaths, pedophiles or abusers themselves. More recent studies have estimates now show that half or more do not. Spanking a child on the butt doesn't result in abusive, unruly teenagers as Dr. Spock hypothesized. In fact, allowing children to run rampant freely seems to make teenagers who go all Columbine. So instead of blaming nature and absolving people of their very personal choices, their very personal-ity, it's probably time that we admit that choices are just as much who we are as the basic DNA, and in fact, probably more.
There's no doubt that my friend found some explanations for how he is when he met his blood. But is he who he is simply because of that? Certainly not. At some point, who he is can be likened to a mixing bowl. If we take a bowl of flour and begin mixing in ingredients, we could end up pancakes, bread, cake or even paper mache mix. It's silly to assume that just because the DNA contributes that it determines what we will be like. It takes away our ability to grow for one, and worse yet, takes away our sense of responsibility--that which helps us choose right over wrong. DNA is the flour, but what is added by others--mentors, siblings, parents, etc.--and what is added by ourselves--choices--make us who we are. Ultimately we choose who we are and who we want to be, and we have no one else to blame if we are not who we should be.
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