Genes vs Environment

Ever so often in life you witness a situation, which is almost like straight out of a book – the story of the the good brother and the bad brother. Both of them growing up in a seemingly identical circumstances and sharing their DNA, and yet, their lives turn out to be completely different. The one sibling looks like he has it more or less figured out, but the other one seems to be going completely off the rails. It’s an anecdotal example, but in moments like that you see that stories from the books and the so well-known clichés are indeed inspired by real life people. How does this specific situation happen?

This one particular moment got me curious and I couldn’t stop but wonder. I myself don’t have any siblings, so I can’t give you any personal example, but I am sure you’ve dealt with the phenomenon previously in your life. It only takes one person, one bad example you stumble upon in your life to get your eyebrows raised – what went wrong with that person? Who is to blame? Why do some people seem to be having an easy life, while to others everything comes with a significant amount of struggle? In precise, they seem to be creating the struggle around themselves. The specific example with the two brothers makes it more complicated to untangle at first glance, because of the seemingly similar starting points in life, but it doesn’t need to get as far – why does this happen in general? Are the genes or the environment to be blamed for one’s success or failure in life?

As it turns out – both of them are. It’s the mixture of the genes with the environment that makes us who we are. The gene-environment interaction has been first introduced in the 1930s and remains the topic of the debate today. To put it in simple words – you have your unique set of the DNA in you since the moment you are born, but not all of those genes are triggered daily. Imagine it as a piano – only when you play a certain key, a certain sound will be made. Some of your DNA-keys will never be pushed, until you end up in some specific situations, that trigger those exact responses in you. This explains the good and bad brother dilemma – in this case, it was most likely the influence of a bad friend group and parents probably couldn’t have done anything differently.

This highlights another topic I’ve been talking about – be conscious of your environment. Be mindful about the situations and people that you expose yourself to, because eventually you become who you interact with. Your surroundings and circumstances, that you interact daily with, have a significant influence on you, whether you accept it or not. It is hard for a human being in a modern society like ours to actually see where the influence of the outside ends and where your own personality begins, or which thoughts of yours are in any way original, which is only why it is more important. You never know what DNA-keys some people might trigger in you and where those responses might lead you in life. Of course, it is never possible to prevent all the bad influence from ever happening to you, but there is nothing new under the sun. The situations that you are in, at least a million people have been in before. Talk with your friends and family – they might see what you are missing. It only takes one extra step a day to make it an as smooth and positive experience as possible.

I wish you best of luck and peace for your soul!

Love,

Faja