What truly defines us?

Sitting at home on a Monday afternoon writing my weekly blog for AP Lit class, what could be better? Since I struggle to find something to occupy my time with before I go out in a couple hours, why not write my blog? I think after this I should probably start reading my IR book. Yes Mr. Burke, I know I should have started it already, but I haven't so I will try today.

So anyways, this week in class we talked a lot about Bartleby and on Friday, we had a long class discussion about Bartleby and about Crawford's "Shop Class as Soulcraft". The discussion we had really got me thinking about what really defines us. Is it our education? experiences? relationships? work? what? In class I said that it's more of our education that defines us than our work because education is what helps us figure out what we want to do with our life. But, it's not the only thing that defines us.

Everything we do and everyone we met helps us to further define ourselves. I came to this conclusion last night when I was at my grandfather's 83rd birthday. I have two little cousins who are sisters that are a couple years apart. Thinking about their differences in their personalities made me think about my personality vs. my brother's. Since the time we were young, you could tell that there were similarities as well as differences between us. If you look at the picture above you can see my brother and myself, but by looking at this picture you can't tell the differences between our personalities, only our physical differences. But what made these differences in our personalities that made us so unique? Again here comes the question of what truly defines us? I think that it is everything in our life. Everything we do is significant to defining ourselves. As we go through our life there are significant and insignificant events that help to shape us as people. Our relationships with people bring out how we feel and what kind of people we are. Our education reveals what we are truly passionate about. Our work shows our determination to go after our dreams and aspirations. There's not one thing that truly defines us, it is a mixture of everything we do and everything we experience.