The Qualities That Make Us Who We Are

Last night as I was falling asleep, I had the Thought:

Who am I if you strip everything away? Let’s take away the people I know, the experiences I’ve had, the things I’ve learned, even my sensory abilities, my personality, biological makeup, my creative or intellectual or spiritual side. After a certain point, I become nothing. As you remove quality by quality, eventually nothing is left but nothingness itself.

Here, by qualities, I mean anything that makes you who you are.

When you lose all these pieces of who you are, eventually, what is left? It will just seem like an artificial, fragmented part of you. After a certain point, you would cease to be you.

As a peculiar example, let’s take one detail about all of us. Of course, our skin tone is a major part of how we see ourselves and others. It is probably the first or one of the first things you notice about a new person that you meet.

Consider this:

What if we all woke up tomorrow, and everyone’s skin was transparent?

You could literally see our internal organs, nerves, and maybe bones. I think people would feel more naked than ever, and they would start wearing something to cover all their exposed skin, at least what the clothing did not cover. Or they may cover it with makeup to give themselves an artificial skin tone. Otherwise, this would be too much of a distraction for most of us to bear. It would be difficult to hold a conversation with someone while you can literally see their brain. Or you may look at someone’s hands and see nerves and even bones, which could be off-putting, of course.

Yet, in a sense, nothing has really changed. We would still be the same people we always were. Our organs have always been there, they haven’t moved. But somehow, actually seeing them there would change our perceptions, our behaviors, perhaps even our beliefs.

The book Blindness by José Saramago left an impression on me when I read it many years ago - as this is a thought-provoking novel. The premise is that people spontaneously begin to go blind due to some unexplained circumstance or illness. Obviously, our sight is a pretty major quality that we value in ourselves. It is the main sense that we use to understand the world, at least for those born with sight. The book is a pretty good example of how losing one quality on a mass scale would change everything.

I have just been left amazed at the thought that if one seemingly trivial detail changes about us, then everything can change. And if one small thing changes, we may feel like we are no longer who we used to be. If my skin suddenly went transparent, or if I suddenly went blind, I think my whole life would change, and I would probably change as a person due to new experiences that would arise from this. People would treat me differently, and I would begin to shift my behaviors and expectations about life. Surely some core part of me would remain the same, but I think it’s easy to underestimate just how profoundly a life must change if we lose a major sense or quality such as sight.

So I wonder, are we just the qualities that happen to make us up? And then, if those qualities can arbitrarily change without our desire, what does that mean for us? Does it mean that our identities are sort of arbitrary outputs based on the qualities we have been given (through DNA and our experiences, etc.)

As an example, if you love rock and roll, it may just be because your Dad introduced it to you when you were a kid. If he had introduced jazz to you at that age, you might have fallen in love with that instead. Maybe if he had introduced magic tricks to you then, you would have loved that. It may have just been a point in your life when you idolized your Dad and wanted to do the same things as him. In this light, some of your qualities may be arbitrary.

These sorts of thoughts have made me wonder about the level of influence or power we truly have over our lives. One minuscule quality can change everything. And many of those qualities that we adopt are based on our environment and circumstances. It seems like we don’t have much choice in the qualities that make us up, right?

However, we may have much more power than we think. For example, if James (fictitious person) works hard to develop himself, he may gain better communication skills, self-confidence, resilience, and stress-reduction techniques. These simple qualities may work to change his whole life. Rather than waiting for life to influence his qualities, he has taken it upon himself to develop into something better.

In fact, to go back to the idea that one simple quality can change everything, perhaps by working on his communication skills first, he was able to gain self-confidence. Then this helped him gain the energy and motivation to improve himself in numerous other ways. One quality, his communication skills, could have made all the difference. And if he never developed that skill, his whole life path may have gone in a different, much worse path for him.

To sum up, in this post, there are just a few key ideas for you to think about:

1.     Who are we really? By removing or adding a seemingly trivial quality in our lives, everything about us can change. Is your identity something that you will actively shape yourself, or is it mostly being done by your environment and surroundings? What part of yourself do you identify with the most? Is this something that you chose, or something that happened to you?

2.     If one simple quality can change everything, you should choose to develop key qualities in yourself that can greatly impact your life. For example, this may be self-confidence, communication skills, resilience, creative skills, memory, attention, or mindfulness. You may wish to learn how to train yourself mentally to improve some of these qualities. The skills or qualities that can make the greatest impact may be different for everyone. You should ask yourself which quality would help you accomplish your life’s mission or key goals.  

Seek Practical Knowledge

Reflecting on some of what I learned in school, I feel that often the material was either not practical, or the case was not made for how the information could be used practically.

If we examine aboriginal societies, I can only imagine that they would laugh in amusement at any ideas that would not be concrete and immediately applicable. Their societies are concerned with daily survival and needs, so it would probably be seen as a waste of time to speculate on ideas that are not easily testable or which cannot be applied for some benefit.

Aboriginal societies may be guided by the actual stars in the sky yet likely be unaware of their chemical composition. A schooled adult from the West, however, is much more likely to know that stars are mostly made up of hydrogen yet have no understanding of how to navigate using the night sky.

I enjoy the world of ideas and abstractions, but perhaps we need to focus on the information we can use more practically.

Practical knowledge can help with many different aspects of life, such as survival, developing useful skills, achieving more of a big picture understanding, finding meaning in what we learn, and developing an understanding of how to approach a variety of problems.

Surely more themes could fall under the umbrella of practical knowledge, as the key point is that this is information that you can use to help yourself or to help those around you. The understanding is not simply theoretical but applicable. And of course, practical knowledge should be shown to work through experience – if it does not work as expected, it is ultimately not practical.

In school, many topics are split up – such as science, reading, math, etc. But in real life, you may face problems daily which intertwine with a variety of topics. It can make sense to learn some of these topics independently in school to master them. But when we face real-life problems which are more complex, we may find that we lack awareness on how to approach them.

School is meant to prepare us for life or at least work, but both domains involve practical and applied situations for most people.

Growing up, my father often made comments about “common sense” – he would say that people don’t have it anymore. I suspect it’s not something that was ever taught. Likely it was a way of thinking and learning that people needed to succeed at home, life, and work – especially as my father grew up in Mexico in the 1950s (and his young adulthood was spent in the US in the 60s).

Basically, it seems that in a prior era, people learned how to deal with a variety of life problems - and this type of skill has largely been lost. We are now highly specialized. For the most part, people are satisfied with only knowing how to do one job (or how to operate within one main field). But in the past, people needed common sense to be more self-reliant - small communities could figure out typical problems on their own without needing to call a specialist.

To me, Common Sense and Practical Knowledge essentially mean the same thing.

Keep in mind that if we go to school and learn how to deal with artificially constructed “book” problems, then that does not necessarily mean we will be ready to tackle real-world problems.

As a basic example, with a book problem, the resources are irrelevant. Yet, in real life, resources are fundamental. For example, if I know that I need a screwdriver to construct a piece of furniture, then if I don’t have that screwdriver, I must acquire one, or at least consider alternative resources I could use. With a book problem, it is usually assumed that the resources do not matter or that you have all the resources you need to solve the problem. Also, perfect circumstances are generally assumed for book problems, but in real life, while you’re working on one problem, new and sometimes bigger problems develop. And you must react in real-time or risk causing even bigger problems.

When I was growing up, my father sometimes asked me about the simplest of life problems. His tests were not theoretical. They would involve an actual problem right in front of us, something in the house or the backyard, or that involved some piece of equipment not working properly, perhaps.

Inevitably, I would not have a clue as to how to resolve the problem.

Then he would show me a simple solution that had not occurred to me. The problem wasn’t really that I didn’t know the answer – but that perhaps a schooled child or young adult should have built a framework for dealing with unexpected problems. Yet, this way of thinking or “common sense” seemed to be lacking.

What is the value of only knowing how to solve clearly explained problems in one specific domain? Real-life does not work that way. Often, there is a problem, and no one has properly defined it. So we must define it for ourselves. To me, that is a simple skill that was never taught. Perhaps it can’t be taught – but somehow, I doubt that.

Any time someone has said that something could not be taught, instructors or academics ended up designing training programs that showed you could probably teach anything. Likely, people become convinced that something cannot be taught when the domain has not been properly articulated – through research, books, or training programs. Imagine trying to learn about body language in a time before anyone had actually explicitly identified the main patterns of body language in humans. Having to teach yourself is much different than being able to learn from someone who knows.

Perhaps some students do well when learning about artificial problems, but others could learn much better by examining real-life problems. The problems could have already been solved by others but which the students have never solved for themselves. If it’s a new and practical problem for the student, that is all that matters.

As a basic example, some students may prefer to learn math and physics by playing with clocks or machinery. This would be more interesting, engaging, and practical than working on book problems.

If a teacher is reading, I am sure you may think that you did make it a point to tell your students how your topic applied to the real world. However, sometimes this is not enough. Students who are learning may need to directly apply their knowledge to the real world for it to have meaning.

A variety of studies show that students forget most of what they learn. Perhaps what people learn should have personal meaning to them. And for it to have personal meaning, perhaps it should be practical and applicable knowledge.

However, I understand why teachers and the educational system in general stick to book problems. It is more practical for them – as they can cover more topics in less time and not have to add resources to the budget.

Sometimes my book learning has even interfered with my understanding of something in the real world. This has been a recurrent mantra in my life, where I have received messages like this: “What you learned in school won’t help you here,” or “What you learned in school was wrong. Actually, it works like this….”

Of course, there is no reason we must choose between school and seeking practical knowledge. Perhaps we go to school to learn how to deal with “book problems,” but then we need to spend some of our own time gaining practical knowledge outside of school. The best way to do this is probably to learn from people who have acquired a lot of practical knowledge themselves.

Sometimes we view practical problems to be at a lower level, but this is a mistake. If you spend enough time in school, college, or graduate school (as I have), practical problems are often cast aside as being irrelevant. Today, if a practical problem arises, or if you see someone working on one - take some interest and see if you can learn something new.