It's your individuality that makes you who you are. When you embrace it, you're conveying your true self in many ways than one
Individuality, as the dictionary puts it, is the quality, or character, of a particular person, or thing, that distinguishes them from others of the same kind. The fact also is - being an individual means being uniquely you, one that includes your unique qualities, values, beliefs, also idiosyncrasies, and articulating them self-assuredly and genuinely.
When we reflect on the people we know - family members and individuals in our immediate social, or professional groups - we are, as Richard Davidson, PhD, explains, in "Cerebrum," often struck by the diversity in personality, temperament and responses to everyday challenges. Individual variation, as he underlines, is perhaps most striking in the dominion of emotion, given that our emotions primarily define how we respond to life's ups and downs, as also where we stand on the scale of psychopathology and resilience. He adds, "Increasing evidence suggests that this variation in the emotional response of individuals to common challenges in everyday life is related to peripheral biology too - i.e., biology below the neck - that may be important for physical well-being.
Interestingly, however, 'that' something has more to it than what meets our mind. For one thing, it cannot be confined within the precincts of nature, or nurture. Take, for example, the remarkable singularity of individuals and the disparities among billions of people - even between identical twins. This is uniqueness. You may also agree to any view, as being the reason behind that something - one that may be espoused by heredity, theology, economics, past lives, history, society, etc. So far, so good, albeit one cannot dispute the pre-eminent role played by the DNA, the corkscrew that carries the genetic code.
New research may not concur with such 'obvious' generalisations, thanks to its solid grounding in a specific, technologically-based approach. It is a methodology which is also precisely differentiated in its methods and sophisticated in its questions. It inquires about differences, even among individuals who are genetically closely linked. Here's one palpable quip: why do twins have different characters, or different fates?
Notwithstanding the ground swell of scientific opinion, neither genes nor environment can be unquestionably shown to determine eminence, or intellect, for instance, yet. As psychologist, and scholar, James Hillman observed, "The striking individuality of the eminent, who we suppose represent, or partake in 'creativity' (however it be defined), is not attributed either to nature, or nurture. Something else? An independent factor?" He elaborated, "To avoid parsing out the 'something else' and declaring for an independent factor, behavioural explanations blend nature and nurture." According to Hillman, the two express a mysterious weaving of black and white threads whose results are so subtly entwined that we are confronted with a grey screen of uncertainty - also, whether creativity is primarily genetic, or environmental.
New findings suggest that our genetic factor appears to get stronger during the 'middle' years of childhood. The findings concern both creativity and traditionalism, or a tendency to following rules and authority, and supporting high moral standards and rigid discipline. So, if creativity shows a modest genetic influence, 'traditionalism,' according to Hillman, seems rather strongly indicated. This is surprising, even though the data are apolitical, with the individual identity of each human being not only expressing an article of religious faith, but also the axiom of the Western and the Eastern ethos.
Human individuality, as Hillman explained, is also a statistical quasi-certainty. More than a brace of theories supports the concept. One is 'emergenesis,' which accounts for genetic convergent phenomena and similarities, and the other is 'epistasis.' Epistasis refers to the inhibitory effect of genes acting on one another in an amazing repertoire of combinations. In Hillman's words, "Behavioural differences among individuals involve many genes, perhaps hundreds."
Epistasis is like 'genetic luck:' an unpredictable 'luck of the draw' in philosopher Plato's parlance. Now, we have a new name for it: 'chaos theory,' a major area in studies of heredity. Yet, reason would make us concede that we cannot think of our biographies only as time-bound, a progression along a line from birth to death. As philosopher Plotinus, a Platonian, put it, "The soul moves in circles." As Hillman articulated, "Our lives are not moving straight ahead; instead, hovering, wavering, returning, renewing and repeating. The genes work in lags and spurts. The sense of being 'in the zone,' in touch, opened out, blasted, seeing and knowing, comes and goes utterly unpredictably and yet with stable patterns."
So, we all are unique, yet not quite unique. To quote Hillman, again, "I'm different from everyone else and the same as everyone else; I am different from myself ten years ago and the same as myself ten years ago; my life is a stable chaos, chaotic and repetitive both, and I can never predict what tiny, trivial bit of input will result in a huge and significant output. I must always remain acutely sensitive to initial conditions, such as what, or who, came into the world with me and enters the world with me each day. On that I remain dependent."
It's clearly your individuality that makes you who you are; this encompasses all the things that make you distinctive and diverse from others, by way of your personality, experiences and everything in-between. When you embrace your individuality you're being true to yourself and conveying your true self in many ways than one. This comprises of your personal flair, interests and hobbies, aside from your talents and skills, or anything else that makes you unique - to stand out from the crowd.
Nidamboor is a wellness physician, independent researcher and author