What makes us unique?

What makes us unique? As they saying goes, “we are all unique, just like everyone else!”

I think we are all shaped but various things in our life, some of which are obvious and some which are not, and are often overlooked.

Our life experiences are well known as being the biggest factor in what shapes who we become, but I still do not fully understand how exactly it can have such different effects on each individual. So to start off I am going to point out that this is an ongoing research topic and I will be learning more about it.

What I currently think is that we are shaped by our experiences, but those experiences are affected depending on other factors too. Your mood, the weather, your circumstances, the company you are in, among other things can change an experience. When you go to a restaurant for the first time and you are irritated, meeting someone you wish you didn’t have to, are looking forward to just relaxing at home afterwards, I think the restaurant would have to be absolutely outstanding to be able to have you leaving feeling like it was an awesome experience. You, unintentionally would be wanting to leave and not want to be there, this could make you find fault in any little thing and not appreciate the atmosphere.

I think that carries through to childhood experiences too, and that contributes to siblings experiencing the same situation but taking it and learning from it in different ways. Take 2 siblings, give them a lesson in math, but tell one he’ll get a chocolate after the lesson and then see which of the two are more eager for it to end. That is an obvious way to judge their behavior, but who is to say that one would not be eager to do something they have not shared with you, and therefore they are eager for it to be over, this in turn annoys you and you are angry and frustrated, this in turn helps teach the child that learning is not fun, and after 1 lesson you may have planted a seed in that child that discourages them from learning. With enforcement this creates an individual who despises learning.

We as people learn what we like and how to get it, and we use this knowledge to have as much of what we want as possible, I have seen couples that are opposite, for example one who likes to party and one who doesn’t. I have seen the one person create a fight simply to give them a perfect excuse to go out and party based on the fight, knowing that the next day it can be made up and the fact there was a fight is a good enough excuse. For some reason this works better, maybe, than simply saying “I’m going to go out and I will see you later.” That would not be acceptable. Often you can see how unreasonable the fight was, yet the process is repeated often. This is part of what makes us unique, we learn from our experiences and sometimes we can choose to use that knowledge for our own benefit.

So some experiences we have before we have control over them, and some we learn to have control over and use to our benefit.

Some people like cooking and some people don’t, why is this? It seems so abstract, we all need to eat, would we not all enjoy preparing food? I personally enjoy cooking, I don’t know how to put together fancy dishes, but I enjoy the process and I more often than not enjoy the taste of the finished product.

But it has been brought to my attention that I have recently been avoiding it a lot more than actually doing it.

I can’t give an exact response to each time, but I can say that each time I avoid it would have its own reason, and sometimes they may be completely unreasonable, but not everything you do, you do because it is reasonable.

I can say that at times I am busy with something and thinking of stopping at that point in time would be inconvenient because I will have to continue with it after cooking and eating, so if I can not take the time to cook then I may be able to finish before it is ready.

Another reason could be that I am enjoying what I am doing more than the thought of cooking, this happens too. Sometimes I am particularly stressed and the thought of cooking feels like additional stress.

So I’d sum up the majority of me not cooking is because I’m busy, or I’m doing something more fun, or I’m stressed. There could be other reasons at times too but those would be the main ones.

I was always happy preparing what I felt like, so if I was in a mood that was not conducive with preparing a meal, instant noodles were fine. Now it has to be a meal, so when I’m in a mood to not cook I’d rather get out of it if I can, I know I wont get away with serving instant noodles.

Something else about me is that I don’t particularly like socializing, I’m more introvert than extrovert. But it seems simply not enjoying socializing or being out and about is acceptable. A reasonable alternative is to work, and therefore I work and find things to work on and that has resulted in the creation of many websites, blogs, all sorts of things online, and helps give me time to learn. But there is a limit to that, I cannot do the things I would enjoy because that would be unreasonable so I have to sacrifice doing things I enjoy just so I am not then forced into doing all the things I don’t enjoy doing. So goodbye simple outdoor adventures, exploring the bush and quiet places, because if I were to do that, I would have to attend more get together’s and parties. So like the couple that fight so one can party, I don’t go on nature hikes because then I feel it would be used as a way to force me to go meet up with a bunch of friends. So I would rather not do both.

So these are the things that make us unique, our experiences and how we let some of them affect us, but I don’t think that changes very often. I may be wrong but as unique as we are, we are usually pretty consistent and therefore we can be learnt by anyone willing to put the effort into it.

I don’t think there is a simple solution, or rather an acceptable solution to the fighting couple. One solution would be for them to agree the party animal can go out whenever they want, but that would leave the half at home alone and they would probably grow apart. They can decide they will go out so often, but every time they go out the one half would not enjoy it and would probably make the experience unpleasant or at least not as enjoyable. So by fighting one can go out and have fun alone based on the fight, the one at home can fume and stomp around thinking about the fight, and the next day they can make up and solve the very minor topic they fought about, thus return to the state of the relationship before the night before. So is this wrong?

To try an come back to us being unique, I would say that our experiences shape us, when we are young and go to a party but lets say we are hungry, sad and angry, we don’t want to play with the other kids and a big fuss is made about how we aren’t a people person, or how we’re not feeling social and we get some extra attention and get made to feel special, just because kind caring people want to improve your experience at the event. How count that contribute to someone growing older to be an introvert?How would that contribute towards the way we act at other events? Would we realize at a young age the different responses our actions entice and would we then use them to get what we feel we want?

I would say you can see that in pretty much every child, from a very young age. They learn quickly what they need to do in order to get what they want, but not often is what they want, what is best for them.

So we are unique but our personalities are built from our experiences, our experiences are contributed to by everything from nutrition balancing the chemicals in our bodies to the reactions we get from everyone we interact with, so no experience is experienced in the same way by any two people. It is also accepted that a lot of this shaping happens when we are young, when we don’t understand enough to be able to actually focus on the beneficial and ignore the harmful.

In our adult lives we do have the choice to accept who we are, or spend the second half of our lives trying to change who we are. But I think people who have decided to be with us, might not like us if we change ourselves either. If I suddenly wanted to go out and socialize constantly it wouldn’t be beneficial to our relationship, and I know this because with a few tequila’s in me I am very social. So then you have to balance it, but who decides on the balance? It’s often not your balance, but someone else’s balance, just as much as your partner would like. This in turn can make  you feel you are not living your own life, you are being controlled, changed, and that fact alone makes you feel unhappy, so you end up possibly becoming more like they would like, but you’re unhappy and in turn this negatively effects your relationship. So at some point realizing that our uniqueness, what brought people together and kept them there, as friends or partners, is probably a balance of its own that needs to be accepted and left alone.

I’m not sure how well I stayed on topic, or in general stay on topic, but this is an outlet to my thoughts and I suffer them constantly so as they say, sharing is caring and I am just showing how much I care 🙂