This week was meant to be nice and summery around here, but so far, it has rained almost non-stop. I am stuck inside behind a screen most of the times so it doesn't matter, but with the very long summer days now, it would be nice to have some warmth and sunshine in the evenings after Smallsteps gets home.
My wife is always cold.
Not sure what that says about her.
But, Smallsteps is more like me and doesn't feel the cold that much, kicking off covers and wearing as little as she can get away with. A bit of a future worry for a father perhaps, but it is a good sign of a decent metabolism, as her body seems to generate enough heat and distribute it adequately. For me, over the last few years I have been losing my cold resistance, likely because my metabolism has slowed through inactivity and aging - soon I will be wearing a winter jacket in the winter!
Obviously, our genetics plays a major role in how we experience our environment, as well as the reactions we have to stimulus, but we can also condition ourselves to affect our tolerances. For example with the cold, I treat 10 degrees in Autumn the same as 10 degrees in Spring - I didn't die from the temperature in Spring, I won't die from it in Autumn, even though the way I experience the same temperature at those different times varies a lot. It is warm in Spring after a very cold winter, it is cold in Autumn after a warm summer.
My wife on the other hand does not do this. When Autumn comes around, she rugs up fast and when Spring arrives, she doesn't "de-rug" fast at all - which means her there is a large difference in the way we each experience the Summer months. It is a hot day for me about 10 degrees cooler than for her. This means that there are far more hot days in my summer than hers.
This then raises many other questions about how we experience our environment and explains why two people under the same conditions, can have such a differing experience. While preference is also involved, conditioning through experience is highly influential and depending on that conditioning, outcomes can change a lot.
If we take something like work ethic as an example, I think it would be possible to predict how well someone is received in the workplace and what opportunities are open to them. This means, that if someone is conditioned to have a good work ethic, they might better received, but more than that, it is possible that for example, the stress associated with work volume might be lower, since the person is probably also more accustomed to having a higher workload. However, in comparison, someone who hasn't this conditioning could be seen as lazier, as they are not able to perform as much work. But on top of this, the person might "struggle" with the workload well before the person who is conditioned to perform better under a higher load.
As said, some of this is very likely to be genetic, but there is also probably a very strong training component to it, where exposure to the environment that grows these various skills and traits are learned. For example, Smallsteps has started writing her own stories on random pieces of paper, and while she isn't going to win a Pulitzer for any, in order to do this, it means she has had to learn a range of skills that enable it. So then the question is, what other affects would this have on her future?
It is obviously impossible to say accurately and even harder to identify what will be positive or negative at different stages of her life, but I think that it is important to consider when it comes to evaluating people in our lives now. For me, this has become even more salient over the last year after having a stroke, because my own toolkit has changed heavily and people who I have dealt with pre and post event, don't necessarily understand how much affect it has on my abilities. As a result, there have been plenty of cases of frustration on all sides, as expectations are not always aligned, even if best intentions are assumed.
As a parent, I have the mistaken belief that I have more of an effect on Smallsteps' life than I likely do, but I do believe that some of her "conditioned traits" are going to be dependent on her home experiences. What kinds of things will be affected and the knock-on effects might be unknown, but at least being aware of the environment and its design can help potentially build stronger positive traits that will serve her well, or avoid negatives.
But, perhaps more importantly than the outcomes for her, paying attention to the environment I create for her, makes me more aware of my own actions in the world and perhaps, the condition that I "suffer" from based on my own past experiences. Maybe then, it becomes a process of shared shared experience of self-development, where we are all learning from each other, whilst being more conscious of our own impacts and limitations.
Just like the weather, life it isn't always going to be warm and sunny, so we have to make sure we are equipped with the right tools to cope in the rain also. That means, being prepared before it rains.
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]