A Misshapen Clay Something, Day 322

I'm convinced that people especially at a very young age are influenced so strongly by their environments that connections are permanently made in their brains; connections that establish who we are. I believe that our physical nature is impacted by outward circumstances and as small children the world around us isn't only impacting our hearts and our brains but is actually weaving the fiber of our beings.

We always have the ability to choose our own paths and to navigate our own footsteps but the ability to choose doesn't negate the nature that drives us. If we choose paths contrary to the nature that's been woven into our beings a ferocious battle ensues (this is where I get my little monster) and usually nature wins, I mean it's only natural. The connections in our brains that tell our bodies something should be a very particular way usually reign supreme. It's very difficult to convince the body of something opposite to what it knows to be truth/ natural.

When someone who's always been angry (who's life has been surrounded and consumed with anger) decides he no longer wishes to be so he must war with himself. When someone with strong addictive habit's (who's virtually never known otherwise) chooses to rebel against the drive to consume she must war with herself. When someone who views the world with an all prevailing melancholy (who's eye's only notice what's familiar, what's comfortable, what's dark) chooses to see beauty and light he or she must war with themselves.

Each of us is the result of billions of experiences and impressions. We have the ability to choose our own paths but I believe that before any of us can do that we need to be able to recognize the march to the watering hole; we need to be able to realize that SO many of the things about ourselves that we identify as ourselves are just consequences of our experiences. Those things, those habits, those viewpoints aren't necessarily you in the sense that you think they are.

Who are you?

The vessel that he made of clay was marred in the hand of the potter; so he made it again into another vessel, as it seemed good to the potter to make. Jer. 18:4

I think the question surrounding each of our lives is, "am I willing to acknowledge that this vessel is marred by wear and tear, by life's messiness and by my ignorant attempts to fashion myself (even though I am not the potter but am only just the clay)?"