Just Musing

Just Musing

It is an amazing thing that we are all a product of our environment. I do not agree with the humanist in this statement, but what I mean is that we are like a product that has many elements, and each one plays a part in the development of the finished product. I think of food (of course!) and how the recipe, when followed correctly, will produce the desired results, and the food is satisfactorily received. If an ingredient is missing, the finished product suffers in the end, either in quality or in precision.
Now, look at your life; you are the total sum of all that you have grafted from others. You may have your parent’s charm; your sibling’s looks; your mentor’s brains, etc, but you are a unique individual nonetheless. Our idiosyncrasies and our “quirks” seem odd sometimes to others, but we had developed them from someone or something that we had come in contact with, and according to our understanding of it.

At birth, we barely had a personality, and that which we did have was mostly inherited. We learn from those around us, and develop habits according to that which we are exposed to; we have no habits of our own aside from natures’ habits that work through the miraculous body of creation, and even that is introduced to us as we grow; we learn to regulate it through training. Now, our God gives certain gifts, and they are not to be ignored, but we often attribute them, most unfortunately, to nature, and not to the Lord. In all we are the sum total of the people we meet and the things we have learned either by the ear, by the eye, or by experience, and that weighed in the scale of “scruples” and our estimation of right and wrong, and even that is a matter of learning. This being true, we are destined, to some extent, by others, in personality and in purpose; we are a product of those books we have read, that teach us to mentally reflect and weigh the knowledge of facts learned, and put them together according to the understanding we have of them, then we choose our way in life. If we are mesmerized by the deeds of outlaws of old, we will be somewhat rebellious, and outlaw of sorts in our thinking and in our walk; if we are impressed by the intellectual, and the accomplishments of science, we will be studious and self confident, and somewhat of a recluse to our studies; we will be an oddity in our society of gaiety and pomp. If we are taken with the wiliness of others, and the debauchery of their deeds, we will seek this power over the multitudes, as they seem to have; all this is generally speaking, of course. Do you see my point? Why should I be proud of what I am, if anything at all, when I am a little bit of so many others rolled into one? Yet those same ingredients are not found in exactly the same mixture and the same proportion in anyone else, because of all the mitigating factors; hence, I am unique in what I am, and so are you, my friend.