What Made You Who You Are?
Pondering the mysteries of personality
My sister-in-law and I had a fascinating conversation over lunch today. Of course it was fascinating because we were talking about ourselves. It was also about how we became those people.
We sisters-in-law have a lot in common — within five years in age, married to two brothers, grew up in the same province, with old-school fathers from UK stock, blue-collar men who didn’t much express their emotions.
We also have a lot of differences. She’s the mother of two, a whiz at interior design and restoring old things for new uses. I’m childless and have two left thumbs, and am happiest when lost in a book.
We were reflecting on these similarities, and differences, as we shared our experiences approaching retirement. Now that working for a living is no longer an imperative, and in her case, now that the kids have much reduced their demands on her time, how to fill the days? How to set priorities, make choices, even figure out where and how to live? Just when it seemed like it was time to relax and slow down, it all seems to be up in the air again.
In exploring who we are and who we want to be when we grow up, if we grow up, we invariably talked about the people who influenced our lives. We exchanged stories about some of the people whose values and beliefs are…
