Personality

In my previous blog on my uncle one of my favorite lines was "The way how a presence of a person makes difference to your life is a complete one hundred percent perceptional feeling and cannot be expressed how much ever articulate you try be". Today, one of my cousins ,whom I have always respected and admired for taking a aggressive approach in all that she does and has really been her success weapon, wanted some views on ''Personality traits - are they primarily inherited or influenced by environment?". I just quickly wrote few lines about my views on the topic and sent her. What I later realized was that it had a strong connection or may be should I call it an extension of what I wrote in my previous blog. If that was on a particular individual, the one that I wrote on personality caters to individuals in general. I was really amazed with the coincidence. Anyways, here is what I wrote,

Personality traits - are they primarily inherited or influenced by environment?

Personality for me is a relative term. It is what others see in an individual. But an individual himself is driven by his mind. Mind is an embodiment of thoughts. Man tries to convert his thoughts into action, completely or partially, depending upon his determination or will to act.

Now what are thoughts? We are all born with a blank mind. As we start growing, we start to think in our language, get influenced by our parents, teachers, friends and other people around you in that order. So these thoughts push an individual to perform his/her actions until he/she reaches adulthood.

Adulthood exposes an individual to a whole new world. In adulthood an individual has a choice to become a Scientist, a businessman, a politician, a leader, a philosopher and a worker. Now none of these are a conscious effort by an individual to become a personality.

Personality is a culmination of thoughts of childhood and adulthood. No one can ever feel one’s own personality for it is never a conscious effort to become one. It is for others to see in that individual as to what he is.

Bottomline: A personality can never be primarily inherited. It was, it is and it will continue to be influenced by the environment.

The penultimate line which goes, " No one can ever feel one’s own personality, for, it is never a conscious effort to become one. It is for others to see in that individual as to what he is", primarily forms the crux of my previous blog on my uncle.

Vishnu Sarma