question of the week:

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what makes you, you?

as lightly as i'm trying to make this question be, this isn't really a question to be taken lightly. because believe it or not, i'm trying to be really deep with this. as in, deep in thought. it is a question to really make you think. what truly makes you, you? the characteristics that you have, the type of personality you portray. where did you get those traits from? your parents? friends? other family members? your teachers? your religion? and if that is the case does that mean you resemble how they are as a person?

last week i was talking to a close friend of mine, who happens to also be my cousin. we talk a lot about family because we come from the same one. let me start of by saying, i am lucky. very very very lucky. in most aspects my family is very "normal" as was my upbringing. we ended up talking about how "crazy" some of our family members are. and i asked the question: how is it that we came out the way that we did? i would imagine someone in my particular upbringing to be very unhappily married, maybe a kid or two, living in albuquerque, with a mediocre job, and extremely over weight. i consider myself lucky because i am just over weight(but as we all know i'm working on that one). now i won't get into too deep of issues, but i didn't grow up living in a very healthy marriage. i didn't really see what a good marriage looked like until i was 19. because of this and because of certain things said to me when i started dating i truly am surprised that i'm not married right now, although unhappily. this brings me back to the main topic. so what was it in me, that decided to do something different? ...because i know that as a fact it wasn't my parents. so what was it?
let me say that i also post this question because i know that a few young mother's read my blog who are raising their children to be loving "normal" good people. and not that i want those mothers to be discouraged by this, but part of my answer for this question is another question: does it really matter? meaning, does it matter how my parents raised me? would i have still come out the way that i did?
of course their are many ways in which i am like my parents. for example, my father. some of my personality traits are the exact opposite of his. but as much as i hate to admit this, i know that my lack of patience comes from him. BUT i'm definitely not as impatient as he is. but lets go back to how i am different. i am nice. my dad really isn't all that nice. lets take a simple scenario. like eating out at a restaurant. he's rude to the wait staff, isn't a very good tipper, and gets upset if the wait staff can't hear him. ...my dad is a mumbler. he doesn't pronounce his words very good and has a pretty deep voice, with both of those things combined he is difficult to hear. i used to be so nervous and scared for a waiter or waitress when i was little and would go out to eat with my parents because i knew it wouldn't be a good experience for them to wait on us. now that i'm "all grown up" and i go out to eat with my parents i do things to make sure things are a little easier for the waiter or waitress. things that i was afraid to do when i was a kid. i make eye contact, i say "please" and "thank you". and the nice thing about that, sometimes now i hear my dad say "please" and "thank you". so i like to think that my kindness is rubbing off on him. but again, what made me change?, what made me be different? now i will say that my mom is like me, or maybe i'm like my mom? my mom is extremely nice. she follows the "golden rule". and between my parents, it was my mom who i was close with, which is true to this day. in all honesty i'm scared of my dad. i was scared of him when i was little, and a part of me still has a fear of him to this day. ...i'm pretty sure that fear will always be there.

back to the question at hand. i have some very close friends in my life who i love because they are in many ways like me. they are nice, considerate, friendly, ambitious, fun, ...yes, i like to think i am all of those things. but these friends of mine, didn't grow up in such an "easy" house as i did. in fact their upbringing was just plain screwed up, and that is putting it mildly. which in my opinion makes room for them to lead a screwed up life for themselves. in fact one particular friend has siblings that have followed in their parents footsteps. except this friend decided to be different. completely different. and not even different as an adult....because i think as we get older and we can recognize that something is screwed up, it is then we can change it, although then it is that much harder. this friend changed as a kid. she took the hard road. she did just about everything opposite than what was given her, and the life she was "suppose" to lead. just how i'm "suppose" to be unhappily married right now.

let me try and make this more basic because i don't mean to ramble. what makes a good person? what makes a bad person bad? of course we know what is good and what is bad, but how does a person create such traits?

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what makes you, you?

zumba 60min