I’m pretty sure that you, whoever you are, have a parent’s or a guardian’s trait that bugs you.  I sure do.  I don’t know if a scientific study’s ever been launched about this, but because of my experience with karma biting one in the ass, I’m pretty sure that life would work itself out into such a way that would make you, when you have kids or nephews or nieces of your own, develop said annoying traits.

See my parents for example.  My mother has some traits that I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t develop; we’re just too different, I think.  My father, on the other hand, is a different story.  I have been branded as a “carbon copy” of the man and it goes beyond just the looks.  I guess because I grew up in a patriarchal family I have come to rely on his judgments as the best ones there is and so I have thus inherited his line of thinking.

Now the thing about my dad is that he has that lethal combination of having a temper and having the pride of a male lion.  I kid you not when I say that a lot of havoc can come out of those two particular characteristics.  Unfortunately genetics mandated that I get those particular traits and at after that, it’s all up to the environment for the shaping. 

While I know that these traits do make me who I am today, a recent bout of my father’s stubbornness (which I blame entirely on the pride) got me thinking.  Do I look like that when I’m having one of my fits?  I’m thinking that I did and I do look like that.  But the problem is that I don’t want to look like that. 

I really don’t know how if there’s a sure fire way of not growing up to be just exactly like one’s parents.  These mannerisms, these habits, after all, are part of who you are now.  Is it really that easy to change ourselves at this late in the game? 

I guess everything is possible, if one works hard enough to do it. 

What I do believe is that the first step to everything is acknowledgement.  Acknowledge and accept the possibility that yes, with these inherited and cultured traits, you just might be a horrible person. 

And then every step you take from here on in will be so measured and exact to be sure that it’ll be going against everything that’s ingrained into you.  You go against your instinct on some things and so you fail to develop the traits you see in your parents. 

At least, that’s my theory.  I have yet to test it out and prove it.  Wish me luck, I guess.