DailyBlog : Why Are You, You?

** The first two books in my six part dystopian series have officially made their way out into the world! Check them out!

For the sake of blogging and self-exploration and contemplation, I’ve been slowly making my way through answering questions from this list.

Today’s question: Why are you, you?

This is kind of a moot point question because isn’t every single person’s answer pretty much ice cream base of “my genetics” with a TON of “my-life-experiences” sprinkles on top?

Then again, I was just having a discussion in the car with a friend today about how interesting it is that some people go through life accepting what they have learned from their families and homes and say, “I believe this because I was raised this way” when I, personally, questioned everything I was ever told even from very early childhood. I don’t take anything at face value, I ask questions and do my research because I want my views and beliefs to be based on self-educating, and not based on what my family or society told me. Even if I wind up, in the end, having the same view or opinion as the initial person or situation that brought it up in the first place, I want to feel certain that my view is my own.

For example, I was raised Catholic. By the time I was ten or eleven years old, I had serious doubts about many of the things I was taught and told. I refused to get “confirmed” at age fourteen because I didn’t feel that my questions were ever responded to with honest answers that made logical sense. “Just believe it.” But, why? “This bible verse says-” No, it doesn’t make logical sense to take anything in the bible literal when we know all of it was written hundreds of years ago and translated through countless languages countless times before we arrived at the “King James Version.” Its’ all man-written, so how it is the direct word of God? That made me very uncomfortable. Why would “God” who is supposedly loving and merciful, send unbaptized babies to hell, or to limbo? Isn’t pouring water over a baby’s head a man-made ritual, and what kind of jerk would God be to send babies to hell if we didn’t pour water over them first? How does that make any sense, and how is that not contradictory to what “God” is supposed to be?
**Disclaimer: This isn’t meant to offend anyone, these are just my own thoughts and questions! My blog, my beliefs, my words.
I felt that if I were to believe everything the Catholic church taught me, I can’t say that I would think very highly of God.

Forgive me, I didn’t intend to discuss religion in this post. The point I was trying to make is that questioning things that seem contradictory, or don’t make logical or scientific sense, is a great deal of what makes me, me, and I don’t know where that aspect of me came from. I feel that there are life experiences I have had that have caused me to be very thankful for this quality and embrace it to its fullest, but it has always a huge part of what makes me the person I am. Maybe cosmically, I was born that way because I needed to be that type of person to survive all I have had to survive in life thus far. Who really knows? Not me, because there’s no proof for or against spirituality in facts and science.

Back to the beginning of this entry, I am who I am because of a melting-pot of my genes, my life experiences, and my choices. That goes for you, too, and everyone else out there. I hope that the “you” that you are, is the genuine you, and the “you” that you want to be. I am not perfect by any means, but I am true to myself, always have been, always will be, and that is one thing about myself that I will never change.