There is an argument over whether a person is born or made. Is it in our nature to be the individuals that we are, or were we nurtured and formed by our environment? Do we blame parents, or science, or do we blame society? Then there is the question of how much responsibility for who we are is in fact our responsibility, and how best to take control of that responsibility and choose the persons that we will be.
I want to rephrase this rather complicated argument into one of relationships.
Relationships are of paramount importance. Relationships give us the opportunity to act out who we are. How we act in a relationship depends upon a lot of factors. It depends upon the position of the individuals involved in the relationship—employee, employer, child, parent, partner, friend, and so on.
Relationships are also dependent upon timing, and cultural context, and even geography. Online, a relationship is different from a relationship in person, or over the phone. Relationships depend on culture and cultural expectations. Expectations between partners in a relationship in Mokpo, South Korea, are different than for partners in South Miami, Florida. Relationships shift according to time. A parent child relationship is an especially time-dependent relationship experienced by many people. Parents grow older and children more mature, and the relationships alter as knowledge and memory are gained and lost.
Nature tends to be pretty fixed prior to our explanations of it. Human genetics vary little. Science suggests that we are 90 percent identical in DNA to other primates; how different can we really be from other human beings? According to math or even one or two religious texts, every person shares a relative with every other person on the planet within 7 generations. So we’re not that different—at the very least we can all procreate with each other. If we’re that physically compatible, our real differences must be learned. And we learn these differences through relationships.
Imagine each individual is born with a deck of cards. The same 52 cards make up each deck. While the font or the packaging may vary, the basic capacity of each deck is identical. But each individual is taught to play their cards differently. Not only are some of us playing bridge while others learn poker or Go Fish or Flower Games (a Korean card game), each of us are playing in a different environment.
Some of us are playing at a table where it’s normal to play for high stakes and cash. Others are playing at a table where the point of the game is to have fun. Still others are at a table in front of a mirror, where cheating is so easy that it’s expected. Still others play in pairs or teams or have regularly scheduled bathroom or coffee breaks that they take together or separately. Others mix alcohol, food, music, or other accessories with the card game. Some of us use the cards as an excuse (infrequent or frequent) to incorporate these extras into our life, rather like college kids play cards just to get drunk or see other people drunk.
These card games are a good metaphor for our relationships. They symbolize where we learn how to relate to people. We learn how to act out our persons through our relationships or “games” with the other card players.
Those of us fortunate enough to travel to different tables and learn different games are given the opportunity to learn new ways to interact with others. One of the benefits of multiple relationships is the choice that comes with knowledge. We can begin to prefer certain relationships. Along with these preferred relationships, we choose certain ways of relating to people while dismissing other ways of relating to people. To return to the card game metaphor, rather than risk a paycheck in a risky poker game, we can opt to play a quiet game of Pinochle or find a table to ourselves to play some Solitaire.
We can then choose which relationships to have—which games to play—to a certain extent.
Based on our past experiences with others, we develop certain ideas about relationships. We begin to make assumptions about the nature of human beings.
All persons are victim to our assumptions, including ourselves. We begin to trust or fear certain relationships and thus certain people. We begin to act out these learned emotions in the relationships that resemble past experiences. Our ways of relating to people and individuals become more and more automatic and less of a learning experience. This saves us a lot of time—it is impossible to know all people and many, indeed the vast majority, of our relationships are short-term. The patterns we establish, our regular “hands” in the metaphorical card game, facilitate our daily interactions, allowing us to operate on social customs and trust those around us to understand our intentions without us needing to constantly explain or apologise.
Unfortunately, this can also lead to “institutional lock-in”. We start to expect others and ourselves to consistently follow established patterns of relating to others. Our relationships become pre-determined selections in a multiple choice test rather than personal decisions.
The bureaucracy of our patterns fast becomes the hypocrisy of human behaviour. We stop permitting people to change. Sometimes we stop looking for change altogether, dismissing the idea that change is in fact possible.
Lucky is the individual that never rules out the opportunity to continue to build relationships and construct new ways of relating to others.
Intelligent is the individual who learns to dismiss poor relationships and to pursue the relationships that allow him or her to act out the person s/he prefers to be.
Recognising this, we move from the nature versus nurture argument to a position where we are able to begin to take responsibility for the mix of experience and relationship parameters that have influenced personal definitions we have of ourselves. We can begin to use these relationships to define ourselves rather than simply let our relationships define us. We can end ways of relating to people that dissatisfy us, relations that make us feel false to the person that we would choose to be. We can continue and be grateful for the relationships that permit us to be the persons we like and wish to know further.
Our relationships are our most valuable aspect of our persons. They allow us to define our persons. In deciding the relationships that we choose to pursue, maintain, and continuously construct, we move from joining a random card game to creating our own community and making up our own rules and expectations.
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