Environment is everything
When we consider nature vs. nurture, it’s clear we’ve had a long pattern of underestimating nurture.
Blame it on my “multi-disciplinary” and “well-rounded” education, but I find it amazing that people still believe “blood is everything.”
That’s something my family raised me to think. And until maybe the age of 5, I understood it as the only truth.
A lot of Old World families think this way… family lines are never really broken, family is determined by your literal blood, blood is what matters, etc.
But in my experience, environment has trumped almost anything genetically written into me, and continues to do so.
I was NEVER supposed to exist. Not in this form, I don’t think.
While some may believe that they’re special, custom-made products of the Universe.. I believe I was the result of a series of different historical “oops” moments that eventually made me into the person I am today.
Like…
Oops, my family got too involved inside of religious activities and needed to flee their home country.
Oops, my father left before I was even born.
Oops, my sister declared manipulative, vindictive, jealous war on me and tried to absolve my existence.
Oops, I started asking too many questions, especially in church.
Oops, I happened to fall in love with a psychopath who tried to kill me.
Oops, I developed a way to maintain a “perfect” external image while suffocating inside, which led me to break down and eventually break out.
Oops, I got into a relationship (and eventual marriage) with someone who never respected me from day 1.
Oops, I divorced him and was told by my mother how useless I was for being a failed wife.
Oops, but I’m not sorry.
My family never considered the environmental impact of me being raised in the States. They, like many immigrants, believed that “blood” was going to ensure my values, behavior, and perspectives fell in line with what THEY thought and believed.
When I started to ask more critical questions, they told me to stop being so American.
When I started to integrate more diversity of thought, they told me to stop being so American.
When I started to have friends of all races and ethnicities, they told me to stop being so American.
When I started dating people of other backgrounds and started learning new languages, they told me I had “lost” my roots and “forsaken” my blood.
Broken. Fear-based. Thinking.
That’s how my family has always worked.
Until I started “messing up.”
I’m convinced there’s another version of me living in another part of the multiverse, screaming inside her captivity.
But ALL of these “oops” moments, these “mistakes”.. these “blood-forsaking” decisions I’ve made throughout life.
ALL of them were facilitated by my environment.
I don’t think I live in the greatest country in the world. I don’t think there is such a thing. I think where you live, and how you weigh good vs. bad, great vs. not great, stems from a whole host of variables SPECIFIC to you as an individual and your personal lived experiences.
There is NO objectively “perfect” environment for every person, because we’re not just cells inside of 12-well plates, bacteria inside of petri dishes, all grown and maintained inside the same well-controlled incubator.
We’re human beings — complex in our own individual right, but with “blood” through-lines that we have to reconcile on our own.
And that my friends, is what environment does. It influences the way that you think, work, and operate.
It’s some of the most imprecise stuff to exist in our world, because we never know what will come out on the other side.
It’s why once my family realized what this “free” environment was doing to their children, they tried even harder to force the “blood” rhetoric.
This is not the greatest country in the world, not even for me, but even after all my life’s mishaps and tragedies, I am so grateful to have gotten to where I am now.
Oops.