Don't Rain on My D.N.A.

I finally figured out a fundamental truth. There is a core nugget of humanity inside each of us that makes us who we are. It doesn’t matter if we are an electrician or a musician, we will react and respond to certain situations in certain ways because that is “just how we are.” When we are cut off in traffic, when we witness the birth of our child, when we see a sunset, when we see fireworks--our DNA is woven in such a way that we feel and sense things without much choice.

I hate parades. I can’t imagine a circumstance or profession that would cause me to feel differently when faced with huge, sweaty crowds and grown men on scooters. I don’t think my parents are very huge fans of parades either. I remember attending a few of them growing up but it was never a valued tradition or an event we could never pass up.

Is my deep, emotional response to parades influenced by my upbringing? Did their love/hate of parades taint the way I viewed them? What if I had been born into a family that planned parades for a living? Would I still hate parades? Would I be able to get past that emotion to carry on the family business? Or, because I am who I am, would I have begged off and gone to art school anyway? Would I then have ostracized myself from my parade loving family? Cut myself off from their respect and admiration? Would I then pass on my distaste for parades to my own children who in turn would be influenced by me in their opinions of their grandparents life work? What if one of my children has it in their DNA to love parades? Would they be able to express that in the hostile anti-parade environment I have established in our home? And when they finally “come out” as a parade lover, will that repair the fissures in my fractured relationship with my parents and have everyone talk to me again at the family reunions? And maybe, just maybe, all of this plays out because of who we are at our core.

Okay, I haven’t figured out squat.