July 2, 2014,
Family 
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What makes us who we are? The age-old question about whether nature or nurture is the dominant force in forming our personality is alive and well. Science and Psychology continue to research and debate this topic and probably will for a while yet.
I believe the answer is both as each cannot be without the other. Nature evidenced in our genetic code creates the predisposition to be a certain way. How we are nurtured, good or bad, will determine whether these predispositions find expression. Those things have an impact on you and your personality as you also affect them, your environment, and the people in it. So the way your mother affects your life, for example, is also affected by the way you affect your mother’s life.
This ultimately comes to influence everything about us whether it is in a characteristic of our personality, an unhealthy allure to alcohol or the possibility to develop cancer. If the predisposition is there and the life’s circumstances are just so then the outcome is reasonably predictable.
Man’s behavioural characteristics change over the years, thus making one’s surrounding environment and the possible conclusions always a variable. And it’s interesting to note here that we impact our environment and the people in it as much as our environment and the people in it impact on us.
History remembers a number of crucial moments, when whole generations and their children abruptly change their view of life, and therefore the way they nurture their children. Many wars have smashed the models of nurturing and have created new nurturing techniques not all of which have been positive for the people involved either at the level of country or at the level of family.
My father grew up in a very large family during a difficult time in history. He was born in Europe just after the First World War and was the second youngest of eight children. I remember that when I was a young child, my father was kind and generous, but he could also be “loud” and prone to extreme fits of anger. When something didn’t go his way, he would strike his large fists on the furniture and slam doors while yelling obscenities. Where did he learn that? I think it could only have come from the frustrations of his own parents who, due to their own struggles, were unable to show my father how to express his anger in an appropriate way.
Maybe my father was driven by anger that was actually a leftover from his own early-childhood experiences. Maybe my father’s anger was a response to his parents’ reaction to what was happening in their lives at the time.
My mother, on the other hand, was not a particularly angry person. And maybe when she became angry, she had better skills to manage it than my father did. So, just as I was learning from my father, I was also learning from my mother the ways to manage anger, and, because of my personality, I was more inclined to follow her lead than his.
I think that when you have seen the force of someone’s anger at such close quarters, you can make a subconscious decision, even very early in your life, that you will not behave in that way. I think, maybe, that is what I did.
Of course, there is also the possibility that I was just not born that way. That it is simply not part of my personality to be aggressive.
When egg and sperm united at the moment of your conception, the DNA carried deep within your genes set into motion a process that ultimately determined your hair and eye colour, your height, and I believe even the basic characteristics of your personality.
Let me share with you one thought by Greek Philosopher Democritus: “Nature and nurture look alike. For nurture truly transforms the man, but through this transformation it creates brand new nature”.
Please, share with me your own personal views on this topic.
To the wonder of you,
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