Born This Way

I was speaking to a friend one time about life, kids and things in general.  Eventually the conversation drifted to the subject of marriage.  For all appearances she had a wonderful life,  a loving husband and two wonderful kids.  As we talked she revealed to me an issue that had troubled their family from the day she and her husband had met.  They were a mixed race couple, she African-American and he of European descent. 

Their issue was that her family had never approved of her marriage to this man.  That was when she said something that absolutely floored me:  If she had to do it all over again she would have never married someone of a different race.  At this point, I admit, I had to stop her.  I stopped her because it was apparent from what she was saying that her problem had nothing to do with race.  Race is something we are born into.  You are either European, Asian, African, Indian, or Middle Eastern.  You don't have any control over that.  Race determines the color of your skin and the shape of your face - pretty much that's it, nothing more.  Her issue was not with race, it was an issue of culture.  He was different.  He didn't think or act like they did, didn't come from a similar background,  and they didn't like it.

Culture is the way we act and think.  It is the result of a series of events, people, and actions that happen to us on that timeline we all call life.  In our day and age of this modern society many of our fallacies of judgment are based on a misunderstanding of this concept.  I would, however, be remiss to not admit that our society has committed many horrific transgressions on the basis of racial judgment.  But culture can be of a completely different nature and deserves a greater effort to truly understand.

You see,  I am a male (no control over that). I have a wife and three wonderful kids.  If I am absolutely honest with myself, I can look back on my life and realize that where I am today is not a result of who I am.  Who I am is a result of where I am today.  Every event in my life, every person I've met, and every choice I have made has brought me to where I am.  If you go back and change any one single part of any one event I would be a different person than I am right now.  Maybe not by a lot, maybe completely different, but different none the less.

An Olympic athlete does not run laps in his crib from the day he or she is born.  Abe Lincoln did not lead the babies in the nursery to reconciliation through incredible strife and division.  These abilities and character traits are the results of the culture in which they were raised, the events that occurred to them and around them through the course of their life.  They were not born that way, but became as they did by the influences of the events and people and choices around them.  The same is true on the other end of society and everywhere in between.   As Abraham Lincoln chose a path that led him to the presidency, an alcoholic chooses to lift that next drink, the dutiful dad chooses to get out of bed in the morning and head off to work to support his family. 

The life events that shape us move us beyond the color of our skins and the shape of our face.  Our choices make us who we are.  Better or worse, right or wrong, we are who we are because of who we have become.  I was not born this way, but I have become this way by the choices that I have made.