Are You a Product of Your Environment? An Introspective View

Nature vs Nurture, Choice and Self-Awareness

We often hear that we are products of our environment. Our upbringing, culture, and circumstances shape who we become. But how much of that shaping is influence, and how much is identity? At what point does awareness begin to separate conditioning from choice?

The question of whether we are a product of our environment has long been debated under the nature versus nurture framework. Somewhere between nature and nurture lies awareness. Within awareness lies the capacity to choose.

In my own life, I have seen how environment can have a significant impact on who you are and who you become. Growing up in a emotionally and financially stable household, I recognize how my beliefs and ideas may differ from those who did not have that same foundation.

Our beliefs and our choices are heavily influenced by the people we grew up with and their behaviors. We observe, we learn, we internalize a sense of what is right and what is wrong. We are not born with these beliefs or with a moral compass. Our core values are largely shaped through external experiences.

I distinctly remember a conversation I had with my late husband during our last year together. I was married to him for over twenty years. He said that we were fundamentally different people. Our differences were not about daily tasks, and that was one reason we did not have many arguments or fights. They went deeper and were rooted in underlying beliefs. I remember telling him that I agreed, and that we were fundamentally different because my ethics and principles were not fluid, and his threshold for what I consider moral was much lower. Surprisingly, he agreed without denial.

I share this example to illustrate the influence of environment. Growing up with fluid beliefs shapes you differently than growing up with clearly defined ideas, not only about what is right and wrong, but also about your own identity.

At the same time, it is important to remember that growth does not occur only in childhood. Our adult environments matter as well. Where we move, the culture we immerse ourselves in, and the people we surround ourselves with continue to shape us.

The Environment That Shaped Me

I will give a glimpse of what it was like to grow up in the 70s and 80s in India, and how this shaped who I am today, placing emphasis on environmental factors.

I grew up in a household where both my parents worked. My two sisters and I would come home to an empty house. We lived about a twenty-minute walk from school, and I remember drinking water from the hose when I reached home because I was exhausted from the sun. My mom would come home about an hour later, while my sisters and I were out on the road, barefoot, playing with ten other kids from the neighborhood until sunset, or until we heard her call us.

I remember my dad began traveling to Europe for work when I was around nine years old. Germany, Italy, Switzerland. We would wait for him to return because he brought home wonderful things, like a percolator, or what I now call a coffee machine. But I was more interested in his stories, which I still remember in detail. I listened with curiosity about the food, the weather, the cars, and the houses. I was especially surprised to learn that cars had heaters because it got too cold. I did not know what too cold meant. I lived in a warm state where temperatures did not drop below 45°F, even in winter.

I do not remember my parents ever having an argument. If it happened, it happened in private, and we never witnessed it. Because of that, I came to believe that raising one's voice and arguing were not a part of how couples communicated, and this shaped how I tried to function in my own marriage.

My dad was known for his strong principles and morals. I saw other members of our extended family, or families of friends, operate from principles that were different from what I saw at home. I sometimes heard alternate explanations for behaviors that did not fit into my own framework of beliefs.

Exploration and Growth

When I moved to the United States for graduate school, I landed in Miami, where my sister was living at the time. The weather felt no different from India. I later went to school in Kansas, and in August, it was very hot there as well.

The first time I saw snow was in the mountains of Colorado in December of 1999. Three friends and I drove from Kansas to Denver, and then up to Vail, grooving to Bon Jovi's You give love a bad name. Even today, whenever that song comes on, I am transported back to that trip. You can read more about auditory nostalgia in my blog Nostalgia: How the Brain Reconstructs the Past Through the Senses.

On that trip, I remembered my dad’s stories about how cold it would get and why cars needed heaters. I went for a midnight swim in the resort’s outdoor heated pool as snowflakes fell from the sky. It remains one of the most magical memories I have, because it was the first time I saw snow.

That trip was the first time I understood that knowledge and experience are not the same. I had heard about cold weather my entire childhood, but until I felt it, it remained abstract.

The weather is just one example. What we grow up with becomes our normal. It defines what we think is standard, reasonable, even moral. Exposure to something different does not immediately change us, but it begins to stretch the boundaries of what we believe is fixed. Environment shapes our initial framework. New environments test it. Some beliefs expand. Some harden. And some we choose to keep and each move added something: independence, curiosity, exposure. None of it erased what I grew up with, but it did begin to separate what was inherited from what was chosen.

The Choice and Self-Awareness

The move to the United States was a pivot for me in terms of what was acceptable and what was not. I was no longer guided by my parents or surrounded by people who were familiar. I was no longer observing the behaviors of those who had shaped me. I was alone. I made my decisions alone and faced the consequences alone.

This is where what I had learned, what I believed in, what I was comfortable with, and what I was not comfortable with became clearer and stronger. I became my own moral compass.

So when I chose not to let my children drink from the hose, walk home alone at seven years old, or play barefoot on the roads until sunset without supervision, that was a choice I made based on what I believed was acceptable. At the same time, I do not judge my parents for what they believed was right, nor do I ignore the cultural context of that time.

As I already mentioned, another belief I held was that couples did not need to argue or raise their voices at each other. I learned this by observing my parents. When I had disagreements with my late husband, which was not often, I would cringe. It went against my core understanding of how couples should communicate. Yet as a therapist, I knew that open communication was important, even though I found it difficult. The fact that I noticed the discomfort was self-awareness. Choosing to communicate despite it was a choice.

One choice that was rooted in childhood, and not from my move to the United States, was my decision not to go into any biological sciences field. My mother was a working mom with no childcare available, so when I got sick she would take me to the college where she taught.

I remember staying in the staff room with my mom or with other staff while she went to teach a class. Sometimes, when I was feeling really ill and needed to lie down, she would pull together a couple of chairs for me in the rather large zoology labs so I could rest. I would lie there with a fever, mostly alone, surrounded by numerous shelves filled with jars of different sizes containing chloroform-preserved specimens. I watched them with both fascination and loathing, especially the one that held a preserved fetus.

When I felt better, I would sometimes accompany her to her dissection labs where I watched her dissect frogs, lizards, and occasionally cockroaches with incredible dexterity while teaching students those skills. I vividly remember the distinct smell of chloroform, the frogs and lizards pinned to wax trays, and the careful precision of the work. I told my mother very clearly that I was never going to go into any field that required me to touch, let alone dissect animals, even for teaching.

Later, when she began her PhD in her mid-forties studying snake parasites and spent long hours and many weekends in the labs, I stayed well away from there because of my intense fear of snakes and my unwillingness to watch the dissection process. I did help her in one small way, though, gluing photomicrographs into her thesis, which was nearly four inches thick. This was long before computers made that process easier.

I did visit my dad’s lab a couple of times as well, where he worked on developing leather pigments. It did not elicit the same visceral response as my mom’s lab. I still remember him bringing me nail polish remover that he had made in his lab because I was obsessed with nail polish at the time. He explained to me how harmful those chemicals were to have on my nails.

I did not choose to go into his field either (he has a PhD in organic chemistry), though that had more to do with my intense fear of chemistry, the only one exam I have ever failed in my life.

Looking back, I realize that environment played a large role in shaping that decision not to go into those fields. It helped me understand not only what I wanted to do, but also what I knew I could never do with my life. Many children eventually follow paths similar to their parents, but my experiences led me in a different direction.

But are we truly a product of our environment?

I know I made many changes to my beliefs after I moved to the United States. Now, when I return to India, I find that my beliefs are not the same as they once were, and at times I struggle to reconcile the two. I sometimes have disagreements with my mother about things she says that are accepted in India but that I find unnecessary or hurtful. She understands the context I am coming from, even if we do not always agree.

We adapt to changes in our environment. What we believe evolves with time and exposure. Self-awareness allows us to see that evolution happening. It is the moment we recognize that not every belief we hold was consciously chosen. Sometimes it was shaped by environmental influence. That recognition creates the possibility of choice.

Environment may write the first draft. You edit the later chapters.

We do not begin as blank slates, nor do we begin fully formed. The influences we inherit are powerful, but they are not final. Our early surroundings shape our beliefs, our reactions, and our understanding of what is acceptable. Awareness gives us the opportunity to examine those beliefs and decide which ones to keep and which ones to revise.

What shaped you is not the same as what defines you. You inherit your beginnings, but you choose your direction.