I think people love pretending it’s one or the other because humans have an unhealthy relationship with making everything a damn team sport. Nature versus nurture. This or that. Pick a side. Reality doesn’t care about your neat little categories. It’s both. Always has been.

Every experience you go through leaves a mark. Getting screwed over teaches you who not to trust. Losing someone reminds you that time doesn’t wait around for anybody. Working hard, failing, succeeding, getting knocked flat on your ass, all of it changes you a little bit. Every good day and every bad day adds another layer until you end up being a completely different person than you were ten years ago. That’s just life doing what life does.

Here’s the part people forget. Who you already are changes the experience too. Two people can go through the exact same thing and walk away with completely different lessons. One person sees failure and quits. The other sees failure and gets pissed off enough to come back swinging. Same experience. Different person. Your personality, your values, your stubbornness, your sense of humor, they all decide what that experience actually means.

So I don’t buy the argument that we’re shaped by one more than the other. Experiences build us, and then the version of us that gets built changes every experience that comes after it. It’s one giant feedback loop that never really stops until they throw dirt on top of us. Kind of depressing when you say it like that, but it’s also why people can keep changing their entire lives at any age. You’re never just the product of your past. You’re also the person deciding what the hell to do with it next.