Heidi Cordsen
English 10 Block B
1-24-00

     Our personalities are created by those around us.  We may not realise it before it’s too late; we may never realise it.  Even if we do, do we have the power to consciously change what our personalities will turn out like?  Is knowing what we will be like enough to alter our final self?  Could we even alter it?
 
    The answer is no.  We will turn out according to those around us.  There’s no stopping it.  The first ten years of life will determine what we’re like when we’re older.
 
    We take on attributes and characteristics of those that’s we interact with.  We do this without realising it most of the time.  The more time you’re around a person, the more similarities will occur between the two of you.  A combination of little bits of everyone you know is ultimately what makes us up.  For instance, the most influential people in the start of most of our lives, is our parents.  You will take on a larger percent of whom ever you spent the majority of your childhood with.  We will turn out similar to our parents whether we want to or not.  They monitor our opinions as children, essentially moulding us into what they want.  This childhood conditioning is also what contributes to our final self.  The biggest part of us is taken from strong influencials in our early years.

    Being around others with strong personality traits, good or bad, will cause you to have tendencies towards those traits.  We usually look up to the people whose traits we take on, making it easier for us to act like them.  We feel good about acting as what we think is good, so our subconscious tries to be as those we admire.  Bad personality traits are subtle, so even though you take in those as well, you won’t notice until much after it is programmed into your behaviour.
 
    We may be manipulated to be what others want us to be.  Reverse psychology, subliminal messaging, and even subtle behaviour patterns are used by some, especially the media, to make us into what they want.  Lifestyles and images are impressed upon us, trying to make us into what we are expected to be, not what we are, or want to be.  They present what we are supposed to be like in such a way that we think we are who we want to be, but really, we are what others want us to be.
 
    Deep down, we are driven to be like others, to conform, to fit in.  In some way, we all have to conform to society and others around us, even if it means doing something we don’t want to do.  Hey, I wear clothes.  Why must I wear clothes if I don’t want to?  Because the world around me tells me to.  If I truly projected my real self, not the self I have had formed by the world, I would be arrested.
 
    Not only do we conform to the common sense of society, but our thoughts and emotions revolve around others.  We feel safe if our opinions are shared with others, and no mater what, there will be people that share your opinions in some way.  Safety in numbers; if others are like us, it takes away the vulnerability of being unique.
 
    Each person is different only because we have all interacted with different combinations of individuals.  Somehow if we do realise that we are conforming, we can stop, and invent a person of our own, and be us, and only us…  Or at least we like to believe that.
 

By Heidi Cordsen
 

I have a hard time swallowing what I just wrote, I don't know how much of it I even beilieve.  I had to write a themeatic essay for English, on a toouc that could be argued and debated till the end of time.  So, there it is.  Comments?  Your oppinion?  E-Mial me!
Heidi Cordsen
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And damn proud of it!

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