I was in a thoughtful mood yesterday. I started thinking about whether or not our lives our relatively mapped out at birth, or if the future is wide open.
Believing that our lives were predetermined at birth is perhaps making things a little too easy for ourselves. If we believe that no matter what we do, our lives will suck and we'll fail miserably, we have a good excuse not to even bother trying and we have the perfect scapegoat. It's easier to have something to blame, that it was fate, rather than admit that the problem lies with you and not with some grand plan thought up by the universe.
Personally, I don't think that every little thing is planned out in advance. For example, I don't think that me sitting here writing this right now was predetermined. However, I do sort of think that the larger things might be mapped out for us at birth. Such as the kind of person we're going to marry, or not marry. How successful we will be in our careers. How much money we're going to have. These are things that appear to be rather set, partly because we're very likely to live in the same social sphere as our parents. However, whether or not these things are due to some predestined plan or due to our upbringing is the question. Which begs the age-old question of nature vs nature. Are we born fucked up or destined to be mediocre or do we get that way because of what we experience in our childhood? Conversely, are we born with marvellous personalities and a nack for succeeding or is that also due to child rearing? It can't all be due to how we were raised. How then would we explain some people being sociopaths? How would we explain Ted Bundy? It can't be all child rearing.
So I think that although nurture is crucial, some of us were born to succeed while some of us were meant to be less successful, or less happy, or more happy. There has to be an even ratio of happiness, success, unhappiness and failure to go around in order for the universe to be balanced. Some people are only meant to reach a certain level of happiness and success while other people are meant to have a smoother ride through life. Sure, we all go through hard times, but it just seems that for some people it's more and for some it's less.
How we were raised plays a huge part in our level of confidence, harmony, courage and happiness, but I think that ultimately there are some people that will not succeed no matter what they do. They're the ones that will achieve something really great one day only to have something tragic happen to them the next, almost as though the universe needs to balance it out. As if the universe goes "Oups! How did he slip through the net? He's supposed to be one of the less happy ones, better fix this!" And vice versa.
Then on the other hand, I'm much more inclined to go with the nurture theory. Our personalities may be predetermined in really broad strokes, like what kind of temper we're born with, but the rest comes later. But if we can be born a sociopath with no ability to feel empathy, which apparently we can, what's to say we can't be born to be winners or losers? It's not all that black and white I know. Who's to say who's a loser and who's a winner. To me, a winner is someone who's happy. Isn't happiness what it's ultimately about. You want that great job because it'll make you happy and you'll earn good money, which will also make you happy. You want that girl or that guy because you think they will make you happy. Happiness is the ultimate goal, no? Even if you're in it just for the money, you want the money because that'll make you happy.
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