Once I had completed my interviews, concluded my research, and concluded my analyses, I was left with a fairly intricate and intriguing picture. I had noticed pattern and reason behind the behaviors and attitudes which I had accepted as innate and unchangeable. I felt as though I had begun to untangle the human psyche, finding causes for the personalities and mannerisms. Unfortunately, I remain too poorly equipped to accurately declare certainty because, as this study revealed, the human experience is ultimately subjective and individual, lacking in general rules and parameters.
Ultimately, this study allowed me to better understand and recognize the flexibility and affability of one’s personality. The traits that I believed to be innate and unchangeable proved to be evolved and learned responses to the environments where one was born and raised. This study revealed the true durability and fluidity of the human behavior. With relative ease, people were able to abandon the psychological defenses they had built and morph their identity to better fit and function in the new environment. An individual’s nature has come to resemble a chameleon, slowly shifting from one shade to another to a third.
The changes, although drastic are not overpowering. The evolved traits are not replacements but additions to the already present ones. Each trait, personality, and attitude is a response to a particular lifetime experience. Without these experiences a person is nothing but an flesh sack merely existing. Thus, I realized that an individual’s personality best resembles an unending Jenga tower of infinite length. The tower, standing on a base of wooden blocks, changes in shape and height through the addition of new blocks and the removal of old ones. Ultimately, one is left with a uniquely structured tower, its shape determined by countless block-moving events, but the blocks which helped build the initial structure remain as integral parts of the tower, without which the whole construction would collapse.
Ultimately, this study allowed me to better understand and recognize the flexibility and affability of one’s personality. The traits that I believed to be innate and unchangeable proved to be evolved and learned responses to the environments where one was born and raised. This study revealed the true durability and fluidity of the human behavior. With relative ease, people were able to abandon the psychological defenses they had built and morph their identity to better fit and function in the new environment. An individual’s nature has come to resemble a chameleon, slowly shifting from one shade to another to a third.
The changes, although drastic are not overpowering. The evolved traits are not replacements but additions to the already present ones. Each trait, personality, and attitude is a response to a particular lifetime experience. Without these experiences a person is nothing but an flesh sack merely existing. Thus, I realized that an individual’s personality best resembles an unending Jenga tower of infinite length. The tower, standing on a base of wooden blocks, changes in shape and height through the addition of new blocks and the removal of old ones. Ultimately, one is left with a uniquely structured tower, its shape determined by countless block-moving events, but the blocks which helped build the initial structure remain as integral parts of the tower, without which the whole construction would collapse.