Default Human
Is it nature, or nurture? Is this something we’ve picked up along the genetic highway over the last 5000 iterations of our genetic code, or just the byproduct our human interactions in our very small lifetime?
Where does the border between personality and programming begin/end, and is there ever a way to understand it until we give up our need to judge, and simply observe ‘what is’?
I honestly don’t know – so if you have any ideas, please feel free to share.
I ask this because I have had some very interesting interactions with people over the last few days, and a couple of them have really made me realize some of my own issues. I’m still trying to understand whether these are a nature thing, a nurture thing, or just dumb negative associations that I picked up along the highway of life and am still holding into, like a 48-year-old with a pet rock that he still thinks has value somehow!
No, I don’t own a pet rock, but I think I have several stupid internal dialogues that I would like to switch for a pet rock 🙂 if I could.
One of these is that I can never allow my personality to go full force, for fear that I will make some terrible mistake and cause some irreversible damage. I don’t know where this started – although I can hazard a few guesses.
Wherever it came from, it controls my actions to a degree that I am not necessarily aware of, and I can’t work out yet whether that is a good thing, or a bad thing.
Notice I didn’t say ‘right or wrong thing’.
Because I’m sure that at some time, some terrible mistake has been prevented by not going all in on something, yet I am also aware that there are times where that could have worked out very well.
The truth is that I would like to have that decision made consciously, rather than subconsciously. Slowly, very slowly, I am learning to bring that choice into the light.
And although it controls me still, it’s grip is slowly loosening.
Another belief that is buried deep in my nervous system is that when things go right, and reach that point where they are going really well, something will go wrong. As if a moment of excitement, joy and happiness somehow summons a cosmic force that will create something bad right on cue.
And invariably, whenever things go well, something will come along that fulfills that belief.
Until I realized that bad things and good things are two sides of the same coin, and you never get a continual supply of one or the other.
I feel to share this today so that you can see that everyone has their hang-ups, and their idiosyncrasies that make no sense, and that are grounded in either nature or nurture. Sometimes we beat ourselves up over the very things that everyone else suffers from, but very few people talk about.
If you find yourself controlled by thoughts such as these, please know that you are not alone… And you don’t have to feel ashamed or somehow insufficient about it.
Because none of us are perfect. Everybody that you look up to, everyone that you think is somehow better then you, smarter than you, more successful than you or in some way or another more than you has their share of issues, hang-ups, problems and pain. They just might not be up to sharing then.
The truth is, we are all default human, on our journey to become whoever we are going to end up being. It’s not a race, it’s not a trial, and it’s not a scam.
This is life, and you have just as much right to it as anyone else.
— Dr. Alan Barnes
@maddrbmusings