People often ask whether we’re shaped more by our experiences or by who we are.
I think neither.
To be honest, I think we’ve been asking the wrong question all along.
The word shaped has always unsettled me. It sounds as though life is a pair of hands forcing us into something we never chose. As if every disappointment, every success, every heartbreak, and every victory has the final say over who we become. It makes us sound passive, like clay waiting to be moulded.
I beg to differ …………………..
Our experiences influence us, and our personalities guide us, but neither has the authority to define us without our participation. There is something within us that still chooses how we respond, what we hold onto, what we release, and what we refuse to let become our identity.
I’ve met people who walked through the same storm and came out carrying completely different stories. One became bitter, another became compassionate, one learned to close every door, and another learned to leave one open. If experience alone shaped us, their lives should have looked the same. They didn’t?
The difference wasn’t only what happened to them. It was how they answered what happened. Somewhere between circumstance and character lives something quieter: the freedom to respond. That freedom may be limited at times, influenced by our history, our relationships, and our wounds, but it is never entirely absent. And perhaps that’s where our humanity is found.
Maybe the better question isn’t, “Are we shaped by our experiences or by who we are?” Maybe it’s this: Who are we becoming in response to what life places before us?
I don’t believe life writes our story without us. I believe we write it alongside every joy, every loss, every act of grace, and every difficult choice. We are not merely the product of what has happened to us, nor are we isolated from it. We are people continually deciding what kind of person we will be in light of it. Perhaps becoming has never been about being shaped against our will. Perhaps it has always been about learning to choose, again and again, who we are becoming.
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