Human Nature: The formation of character

I find myself being compassionate to other people’s struggles and challenges and like many others before me, I ponder upon the nature of human character. Now, this may not be how other people perceive who I am, each has their own view of my nature based on our interaction and the conclusions they draw from it, but this is how I view myself as.

In my view, there are two important things in the formation of our character, the experiences we endure and the choices we make. Our society is full of diverse opinions and world views and this often leads to unwarranted critique of who we are as we are growing up. This creates the bedrock of our experiences, most of our memories seem to be formed by negative sentiments of our personality rather than positive reinforcement of our qualities. Each of these experiences creates flight or fight attitude that may be either overt or covert. This is where the element of choice becomes important as what we choose to do in each of these moments accumulates to become what can be described as our character

An interesting element of contemporary society is that social media has given us insight towards the covert nature of our being. Many people naturally enjoy perusing through the image of a social post but I find myself more intrigued by the messages that are attached alongside that post. In many instances, as people post their milestones of achievement, they attach to it a message that seems to vindicate those that have doubted them. On further observation, the “doubters” seem to be specific individuals rather than the general populace. It is the ex-partner that said you would never make it, the crush the never gave you attention, the elder that thought you were disrespectful or maybe the parent that did not think you were not the one they could depend upon, the list is endless.

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