Nature or Nurture? People are pretty complicated animals. It doesn't help much that we think that we're smarter than most of the others. Can we outwit our genetic makeup? Not likely. And then there's what we learn along the way. When ingrained at an early age for whatever reason, learned traits get stored in your cupboard just as indelibly and it gets hard to tell whether they're genetic. For example, I've never liked spiders and I'm an arrogant asshole. I'd like to think I've got a chance at fixing at least one of those.
I've also always had an ingrained fear of failure. That generally has worked for me in individual endeavors, and so I've always looked at it as a healthy thing. But I've learned the hard way it can drive you to unhealthy extremes when an outcome will ultimately be failure and not necessarily through any fault of your own. Someone once told me there are times you have to fail, or people learn to always expect more and more even when it's unreasonable to do so. Unfortunately when plagued with this particular malady, it's hard to know when those times are.
Back to my cupboard. Wow, I see a lot of crap in there. Amidst the peanut butter, mac-n-cheese, and cereal I see expired sardines, fuzzy potatoes and of course, spiders. In other words - assets and liabilities. I know they're both in there, and I really want to get rid of those spiders. And if I can't see them, they certainly get pointed out for me now and then.
I don't mind when people ask "What's in your wallet?" necessarily, but I try not to look in other people's cupboards. It may be a lot easier, but it only distracts me from killin' my own spiders.
Oh. Yeah, I'm working on that other thing too.
