“I am never going to be like my mother, I am my own person.” My coworker said. She is old enough to have grandchildren in high school. OK, I have a mom too, I get it, they can be difficult. Every person has their strengths as well as shortcomings but we tend to focus on the negatives rather than the positives. Most people strive to be likeable and my coworker probably considers her mother to be lacking in this trait.
However, what does it mean to be your own person? We are all unique, but we are all a culmination of knowledge, experience and events that have molded our reality. We have very little control over our very basic principles in life. Growing up, our parents impart on us what they believe to be right and we must accept it as the truth. This becomes who we are. No generation creates themselves. A parent who holds ethics very firmly will raise a child to be very different than another parent who cares little about moral values. When we become adults, we learn options of adopting a new set of beliefs but our base values are all we have ever known and there are no incentives to change. We may believe we are individuals but our very basic ideals were implanted in and loaded into our brains before we ever adopted ideas of free will and free thinking.
We are all like our parents in ways that are beyond our imagination. Some of us were raised by other people in our lives and those people are an emulation of our overall make up. Don’t deny who you are. Be proud and accept it. Know yourself, your strengths and weaknesses and you will be able to figure out the best way that you can make a difference in the world.
Thoughts of Tim Chen 