Sometimes it's easy to see the determining factors of what makes a person's character. And sometimes those factors just don't add up to the sum that stands before you. However, there are a few key components one should consider.
Say you meet someone who has no interest in education, finding work, or anything to improve his or her life. Yet they come from a nice family that tried to give them every opportunity. A big key to this mystery is the people he or she has hung around with over the years. After all, not all friends are good influences.
Most would cite your area of birth and the environment in which you grew up as key ingredients that make up your character. They play a role, yet they play a stronger role for some than they do for others.
I come from a low-income family that, going back generations, would be classified as “country.” My dad grew up on a farm; my mom is the daughter of a farmer, though she grew up in town. All in all, some would look at me, where I'm from, and listen to my accent and call me a redneck or a hick. I've been called those, and more, too often. But how many “hicks” or “rednecks” study Shakespeare? My love of nature means that I enjoy sitting on the ground by an old oak while I read. And I'll be sitting there in my jeans and hat, reading Dante's Inferno or, perhaps, studying diagrams of Stonehenge.
Ninety percent of my family listen to country music or gospel. I was the black sheep, and still am, for being into rock and metal. I'm even odder to them for listening to Mid-Eastern and tribal music.
Everything, I feel, has an influence somewhere. But many of those influences may remain hidden forever. Our experiences influence us, certainly, but what lies within our genes does, too. And in every human is millions of years of evolution encoded within every cell.
Those who believe in reincarnation might say that who you were in a previous life has a direct bearing on who you are now. Those who believe in reverence for one's ancestors might say that your bloodline determines who you are. I'm somewhere between those two, yet, at the same time, who we are also depends on the choices we make.
Other people influence us in ways we're not even conscious of. Say a woman decides to marry the one man with whom she should never be involved. And then, at some point after the relationship is over, she is cynical where she once was open. Perhaps she's also lost her belief in love. Her bad marriage may not be the total reason for her change, but that experience, leading back to her decision to say Yes, is a big part of it.
And what about our dreams? One thing I've discovered is that, if you get a feeling of déjà vu when you decide to do something, there's a good chance you made that decision previously in a dream. Considering that most of us remember only a fraction of our dreams, we may have some of the blueprints for this right in front us and not even know it.
Perhaps you find a friend who remains true and becomes a close confidant. You're glad for that, but what amazes you is how nice and kind he is. Was he raised that way? Or has he had a hard life? Perhaps that friend is so caring because he's known little caring at all.
What determines who you are? Everything. Everything you're aware of, and everything you can only imagine.
