Do you think we’re shaped more by our experiences or by who we are?
A man becomes who he is through his experiences.
Think of a man as a series of layers. Who you are begins in the womb, when you first develop your sense of touch, of hearing. The sounds you hear, and the way you move inside the womb, and any genetic traits that affect your physical development take hold. When you are born, you are the culmination of your life experience: nine months of darkness.
As you enter into the light, you gain new experiences. You can see now, smell, and taste. You experience these sensations, and your body catalogues them under simple labels, good and bad. Happy, and sad. Peaceful and frightened. Satisfied.. and jealous.
As you progress, you develop further. Your categories become more and more nuanced as your experience grows broader. A good you would classify as “good” when you see a child is now simply “ok”. A thing you might have classified as “bad” now exists on a spectrum from a tolerable discomfort to a dreadful fear.
Emotions diversify. Love becomes love of parents, siblings, friends, and romantic interests. Anger becomes rage, annoyance, and frustration.
And the experiences that cause these emotions begin to shape you. Fear with good outcomes develops into courage, while fear with bad outcomes develops into cowardice.
Parental discipline shapes your responses to authority, your morals. All of these things are built on your experiences, and they shape who you become. To attempt to delineate “who I am” without my experiences leaves me as an undeveloped adult with the mind of an infant.
Modern Survival Arkansas 