As humans, we have a significant ability to feel everything and anything that brings us comfort, pain, heartbreak, and happiness. We like to pride ourselves on the fact that we can feel so much and those emotions make us who we are—human. Humans with a heartbeat that can easily be broken but inevitably mended.
Compassion and empathy guide us through life as we relate to others that go through what we have experienced in abundance. Every single one of us has a story we keep close to the heart, a story we only share with people we deem essential to our lives with the exception of those brave enough to tell our story to the world.
It is compassion that allows us to have some semblance of understanding the enigmas in situations that we may never truly figure out. Decisions are made on a daily basis because of the complications and obstacles we have faced, that we have survived. Like I said, we all have a story worth telling. We all have been through our own path to self-discovery as we overcome horrendous agony that has changed us throughout the years.
One of the most controversial topics today is the one question facts or judgments cannot truly answer: Is it genetics or experiences that make us who we are? Does is it make us compassionate or impassive along the way? Why can it not be both?
Some believe only genetics and our own blueprint of DNA makes us who we are—makes us aware of certain situations life throws at us to take a route we would only choose in the process. A person in a similar situation may choose a different pathway, and the codes that form the personality we have somehow leads us to the one answer that best fits us. It is our personality that shapes the experience.
Others believe experiences change us into the people we are or will become. The experiences make us choose between right or wrong, yes or no, good or evil. Our personality is there in the background waiting for an answer, but the things we have overcome and the hard path that remains in front of us somehow overshadows our character. We say no to an experience the second time around because the first time was bad enough, so why go through that pain again when it could easily be avoided? For instance, what if our parents were alcoholics and we chose a life where the bottle is the absolute evil. We decided not to join in with all the others and drink just to forget. That experience shaped our decision to never drink. It is the experience that shapes our personality. The influence others have over us twists how we see the world from firsthand experience.
But why can it not be both? Our personality and experience can be the stronger force that makes us human, that makes us prone to feel compassion over indifference. We feel empathy for someone who has felt loss and grief because we know that heartache. Picking one or the other leaves room for debate because without experience we are naïve and without our personality we are emotionless. It is our human nature to empathize and witness the good in people because we all know the difficulties of being human. Everyone has their own dark sordid past that allows us to sense pain in others.
What is your deep, dark past that makes you human? We all have one.
