The course of our lives can be determined by events and ideas which germinate slowly and, at the time, are easily overlooked and left as insignificant, like a patch of barren soil.
However, with the passage of years and a little sunlight, those small events become the “why” in who we are. They also can influence where we are in life, mind and body.
I was about eight or nine years old and lazily watching TV, probably on a Sunday afternoon, and saw the 1933 science fiction film classic The Invisible Man, which was based on the book of the same name by H.G. Wells. I was transfixed and, in retrospect, the classic film made me feel validated for my instinct to be alone.
When other boys and girls were finding their heroes in Superman, being faster than a speeding bullet, or Wonder Woman’s heroic gender-bending toughness, I wanted to emulate The Invisible Man and be totally out of sight, to everyone.
We humans, at our core, are social animals. Without being included in social groups, sapiens become pathologically sick in mind and body.
I wonder if that moment was like a trailhead of experiences that led me to a life somewhat sadly full of anxiety, agoraphobia, alcoholism and antisocial actions, and so on, all the way down the dysfunctional alphabet.
If you cannot laugh at yourself, you will cry. It has been scientifically confirmed by a global network of research, it is better to laugh.
This is where the omnipresent nature versus nurture debate must be shoved into this scenario. Experts tell us the primary influencer of the conscious and unconscious mind is within the nature versus nurture debate.
That debate tries earnestly to explain the reason why we are the people we are. Nature is hardwired and the result of genetic inheritance and some biological factors. Nurture is all the life experiences and influences on learning, starting from our birth.
I had all the privileges of a household with hardworking and loving parents who immigrated to Canada so their children could experience the healthiest “nurture” part of the picture as possible. I think they succeeded.
Nature would mean I might have been born with less than normal dopamine and serotonin in my brain, and possibly, the chromosome 3p25-26, which has been linked with depression providing a potential genetic link.
Why do some children fail tragically while others flourish growing up in the exact same family dynamic? So much of life seems to be just chance or luck, like dice rolling down a green table in a casino.
That being said, it is a certainty that children mimic adults to learn everything just like all other mammals on earth. Further to that, the link between childhood abuse and addiction later in life is an airtight, scientific fact.
To be over-judgmental and mean-spirited toward humans with life-threatening addiction, in a way, continues that abuse and is a particularly cruel way of viewing the most injured around us.
Empathy and compassion as a default state increases the odds for everyone to have health and potential happiness in a life that sometimes feels like a lottery.
Robert Skender is a qathet region freelance writer and health commentator.
