How We Became Who We Are

Midnight has come and gone and the dog who sometimes likes to serve as my writing companion has chosen to call it a night.

Got too much coffee in me and too much going on to do the same and in spite of a workout and some quiet music I am wide awake so the idea is to dump out the contents of my head upon the page.

Well, some of the contents, some of it isn’t for consumption by others and not all of it is of interest.

Somewhere across the country my little sister has just finished celebrating a birthday and her kids are asleep, waiting for a new day to start.

And I cannot help but wonder what sort of impact and influence the places we grow or grew up in have upon our lives.

I look at pictures of houses from around the country and wonder what stories they could tell if the walls could talk.

I stop, look and listen but the pictures are flat and silent and all I am left with is my own imagination about what life might be or have been like in those places.

Got nothing but my own imagination to fill in the blanks and multiple questions about the neighborhoods, neighbors and weather.

Not to mention questions about how many people live there and who they are.

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You can blame some of these thoughts upon a conversation with some of the boys about the coming election and who is best equipped to help people build and create better lives for themselves.

And you can blame some of it upon my curiosity as a father about how to best position my children to be productive and successful members of society.

It is fascinating to me to think about how different life is for us now compared to a hundred years or so ago.

Modernity makes it much easier to pick up and move from place to place. We aren’t faced with the same restrictions we once were.

Maybe your father was a farmer or fisherman but you don’t necessarily have to be that because the cost of moving isn’t exponential anymore or so the theory goes.

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The boys and I talk about whether we would move for a job. For some of us it is not a question because we did and we would again.

For others it is harder to fathom leaving the place they grew up in, even if it is not the same home.

And so I find myself listening to them, wondering how deep an impact their childhood had upon them as opposed to what has happened since.

I listen and wonder about what makes us who we are and how much has to happen to change that as  we age.

I am a mix of both cause and effect and luck but I don’t expect to say that who I am today is who I will be forever.

Don’t ask me to say what those changes will be or how they will manifest because I won’t lodge a guess, at least not now.

It is after one and a smarter man would already be asleep and not working to make disjointed thoughts read more clearly.

But blogging isn’t always about trying to win an award or get a new gig as a brand ambassador. Sometimes it is just a chance to put your thoughts out there and start a conversation.

We probably should end this here and not get into a conversation about why we ask people to subscribe to our blogs.

Probably should save that for a different day and think about the questions we didn’t ask or answer in this one.

What do you think?