Am I Just Drawn that Way?

I've come to the conclusion that we are who we are, will love who we love and will be who we will be. However, within those parameters, we can grow, adapt, thrive and even change.

In preparation for writing my memoirs this last year, I have gone through all my diaries from eight-years-old to my last travel journals, and calendars, letters and all the autograph books and yearbooks people signed. Such a project offered me a good look at the span of my life to see what changes there have been in how I was perceived then compared to now and how my feelings and actions compare, then and now.

For example, check out the perfect punctuation in the Valentine's Day entry in my diary from when I was twelve. Seriously, what kind of freaky kid uses a colon and Oxford commas? Even then, as now, I was driven to perfectly edited writing, even if my handwriting was barely legible.

“February 14, 1970

Today is Valentine's Day. I got three cards. They were from: Errin Henry, Debbi Robinson, & Eva Clark. Eva put a dollar in it. I went to Daphne Guess's house. She gave me nearly 100 U.S. stamps. One is from 1902.”

In my 1970 autograph book from when I was 13, the general consensus was that I was a sweet, funny, smart—but kinda weird—boy crazy flirt with rosy cheeks and a great smile. My son said, "So, the same?"

Are we destined to be who we are? From 13 to 67, I have traveled the world and had a world of experiences in it, both joyous and terrible, and yet I am essentially the same person I was as a child. Reading my youthful diaries, I see that I was always a social justice warrior, interested in world culture and languages, interested in the culinary arts, a writer, a feminist, a tad eccentric, hilarious, gregarious and so much the same person I am today. To quote Jessica Rabbit, it appears "I was just drawn that way."

If each of us is “drawn” a certain way that stays fairly static in our lives, what does that say about our chance of success with big changes? Having looked over my life in my memoir, I've come to the conclusion that we are who we are, will love who we love and will be who we will be. However, within those parameters, we can grow, adapt, thrive and even change. So instead of being unhappy with who we are, since we're not likely able to do anything about it, I think we should embrace how we were drawn. Our strengths can become stronger, our weaknesses more controlled, our gifts developed and our dreams realized.