selfish genes—and nevertheless learned generosity. Or maybe your selfishness grew into everyday narcissism. Either is possible, although it is rather the rule that for most people their formed personality will be less than their original personality, since living is a hard game that tends not to bring out the best in us.
All the while, some free personality remains available to us. To use the language of natural psychology, we are born with an original personality, grow into our formed personality through living, and retain available personality—that amount of awareness that allows us to make changes, see our formed personality for what it is, make guesses about our original personality, and, most importantly, set a meaning-making agenda. It is with our available personality that we say, “I am not a slave to my upbringing, and I can make myself proud through my efforts.”
You may have been born sad, and life may have made you sadder: it is with your available personality that you deal with that reality.
You may have been born anxious, and life may have made you more anxious: it is with your available personality that you deal with that reality.
You may have been born smart and forced into dumb work: it is with your available personality that you deal with that reality.
The more defensive you are, the less your available personality. The more addicted you are, the less your available personality. The less you think for yourself, the less your available personality. The more the engine of your brain has gone off racing on its own, the less your available personality. The more you've succumbed to one lure or another—we'll examine four lures later on: the lures of language, logic, fantasy, and mysticism—the less your available personality. The more you are being fooled or ruled, the less your available personality.
In short, we may possess much less available personality than we wish we had—and we may know that and experience that as pain.
The following report from Maxine does a lovely job of tying some of these themes together. Maxine explained:
I've done animal rescue for years. Currently I have a feral cat and her litter of three kitties in my attic. It took almost three months for me to see the kitties because she's taught them that the sight and sound of humans is a dangerous thing. I know that I have only their available personality to work with, which even after just a few months is a very fixed and reduced amount. I bet if I could've handled them within days of their being born and played with them in the early weeks, they would've expressed their original personality to me. But as it is, their mama did what she considers a mighty fine job at forming their personalities; and she has very limited skills herself. So every day I just show up, I work with what's available, and original and formed don't really matter. I meet them where they are. There's a beauty in that simplicity and a real honoring of these cats.
But it's all very different when it comes to me. When it comes to dealing with rescue animals with behavior problems, I accept that they have only what's available. It's the sanest approach, because thinking about their lost innocence or what they might have been is devastating to me, and I don't need to be devastated. But if I think about me—or about a friend or a family member—I can't maintain that same neutrality. I grieve for what's been lost. I rebel at the idea that this is all that's left or that this is all that's available. I see and feel the diminishment.
Why do I lose the beauty and simplicity of saying, “Hey, here's what's available today?” Why do I feel paralyzed when I begin thinking about what I should have been or about what life should have been? The idea of available personality goes from feeling useful, simple, and beautiful when it comes to working with rescue animals to feeling like a prison sentence when I apply it to me. I bet I'm not the only one who feels this way. It may be true that we only have so much available personality left to us, but I don't really find that truth acceptable.
A child is born; he is already somebody. To pick one set of circumstances, let's say that he is a bright boy born into a middle-class family that demands good grades and promotes a worldview that includes playing musical instruments, playing sports, admiring nature, going to college, and getting a good job.
The parents pay lip service to the idea that thinking is a good thing but do not do much thinking themselves and do not really like it when their son thinks. They pay lip service to the idea that family members should love one another but don't love much and aren't very warm or friendly. They likewise pay lip service to the ideals of freedom but present their son with the clear message that he is not free to get mediocre grades, not free to dispute their core beliefs, and not free to really be himself.
Of course, this all confuses him. In this environment, he becomes sadder than he was born to be, saddened by having to perform at piano recitals that don't interest him and that make him woefully anxious, saddened by having to take his boring classes seriously, saddened by his parents' inability to love him or take an interest in him, saddened by what he learns in school about how human beings treat one another, and saddened most of all by his inability to make sense of this picture of life—a picture that everyone seems to be holding as the way to live but that to him feels odd, contradictory, empty, and meaningless.
His anxiety at piano recitals is noticed, and he is put on antianxiety medication. His restlessness in class is noticed, and he is put on anti-ADHD medication. His sadness is noticed, and he is put on antidepressants. Now, to go along with his sense that this can't really be the way that life is supposed to feel or be lived, he has three mental disorder labels and three sets of medications that make him a perpetual patient and that produce all sorts of side effects. Everyone in his family seems to think that it is normal that he has three mental disorders—they, of course, all have theirs as well.
Then come his teenage years. Teenagers in first-world countries are underutilized by their society and strangled by the nothingness of school. No amount of tennis lessons, spring vacations, camping trips, or extracurricular activities—including sex, drugs, and rock and roll—can fill the void created by having nothing asked of them. There are only two solutions to this epidemic problem that causes the havoc of Columbine High tragedies, anorexia, teenage suicide, careless sex, video game addiction, social media frenzy, brand name fixation, and deep sadness—that society ask something of its teenagers or that teenagers ask something of themselves. But nothing is asked of this young man except that he do what he is told to do and that he get ready for college.
Somewhere along the line, he begins to have feelings about what work he might like to do and what work he doesn't want to do. His parents—troubled themselves, anxious themselves, with their own opinions and agendas—add their input and try to influence his decision. Since he seems to like biology, why shouldn't he become a doctor? He shrugs, not wanting to think about the future; what he really wants to do is listen to music, watch movies, spend time with his friends, and find a girlfriend.
College comes, and he is obliged to act like he is deciding about his future. His classes are not meaningful to him, and he has trouble not wallowing in sadness. He manages to graduate, and the part-time job he takes one summer as an intern in a large corporation leads oddly and inexorably to a full-time, entry-level job in the corporate world. His early twenties pass in a characteristic haze of happy hour drinking, escapades and infatuations, office politics, and relentless sadness.
In his mid-twenties, he gets lucky. At that point, having had to survive the consequences of his environmental challenges and his own spotty past, he comes into contact with a psychology like natural psychology that alerts him to the fact that the place he has arrived is rather to be expected. Now he has a pivotal choice to make: whether or not to make use of his available personality to reduce his distress and begin making meaning.
He begins to see that the language of natural psychology—in which we talk about original personality, formed personality, and available personality; about meaning investments and meaning opportunities; about the unfortunate but completely normal (as opposed to abnormal or disordered) consequences of environmental challenges, and about distress relief rather than diagnosis and treatment for mental disorders—can help him think about what is now required of him if he is to reduce his distress and right his ship.
He readies himself to deal with all of this. But there is still the problem of his meaningless