NdukuOutLoud

On who we are, and what life makes us.

Do we get shaped more by our experiences, or by who we are?

My first instinct is to say we are shaped by who we are. That it is us that make it an
‘experience’. Without our involvement, without our interpretation of an event, an
occurrence is just… an occurrence. It’s neutral. A thing that happens, sitting there in the
world, waiting for us to attach meaning to it.

Yes, I know that we also bring some occurrences upon ourselves. But mostly because
there was one event, which we perceived in one way, did something that matched what
we perceived, and now we’ve brough event B upon ourselves. And then all the way to Z.

And that is precisely why two people can be in the middle of the exact same event, at
the same time, yet walk away with completely different experiences. The “who we are”
acts as a lens. It filters the light of our experiences, refracting them into colours that we
then put out into the world.
But then, being shaped by who we are , sounds rather absurd.

Because then who is the shaper? And who is the ‘we’ that is being shaped?
I know that there is a way people are – inherently. There are attitudes, behaviours, and
emotional patterns that seem to come pre-installed. Already programmed. From where,
and by whom? I don’t know, and honestly, I feel like most people don’t either. That’s why
we cling to belief systems—from the mysteries of reincarnation and soul- rebirth to the
weight of namesakes we try to live up to.

Then, reality happens. The experiences we live through come in and “do a number” on
us. Sometimes, we use them as scaffolding to build higher on the character we already
had. Other times, the experience is so heavy, or so sharp, that it forces us to abandon
the old foundation entirely and become something new, something we never expected to
be.

I’ve realized that it’s futile to try and figure out which one does “more” work. They are
two halves of the same process.

You could think of it as a sculptor at work. You have the inherent material—the raw,
stubborn rock of who you already are—but the chisel, the experience, is what eventually
reveals the form. Sometimes the chisel is gentle, and you grow. Sometimes the chisel
hits a hard vein in the stone, and you are forced to break, to reshape, and to emerge as
something entirely different.

We aren’t just the clay; we aren’t just the sculptor. We are the interaction between the
two. We are the active participants in our own formation, holding the tools, even when
we didn’t choose the block of stone we started with.