To create a life is rather easy, people do it all the time.

To create good people, that is possibly the most difficult thing we will ever do.

We have all heard about the nature vs nurture debate, and from where I stand as an observer of nature, I see many deep connections between all living things everywhere I look – connections that run like fungal mycelium throughout the deep-time tapestry of life.

These ancient genetic connections are incredibly apparent to me because I see them in myself. I was adopted as a newborn and spent the next several decades with wonderful, loving parents who nurtured and cared for me, giving me a comfortable home, an education, and most of all, the ability to think for myself. They let me choose my own path – they did not force on me any specific religion, politics, or any other worldviews – they let me choose for myself who I was to become. They were the nurture side of the coin that I received in this coin toss called life.

On the nature side of the coin: From a very young age, my curiosity about the natural world around me was incredibly strong. I have always had a deep empathetic nature and a deep connection to animals, nature, wildlife, and the silent teachers that exists in the forest, an endlessly flowing river, the rolling ocean waves, and the deeptime knowledge that exists in every rock, tree, mountain, water drop, and in our own DNA – these are teachers that only some of us can hear.  Due to these deep connections to the natural world I always wondered if I had inherited this intense love and focus on nature from my biological family.

Then, in 2018, I used the tools of science to find my genetic family and my suspicions were confirmed – my love of nature was indeed genetic – my father and all my family members were great lovers of nature and all things wild and wonderful. My father and I shared so many things in common – even down to things like favorite foods, TV shows, music, vehicles, wildlife, it is really astounding how many deep connections we share.

So for me specifically, the nature vs nurture argument is no longer a debate – i am a product of both of these things.

From my point of view, and from my lived experience – I believe that at birth we carry within our genetic code, a singular sequence specifically written by the experiences of our parents, grandparents, great grandparents and far far back into deeptime, to a time before we gave ourselves names, before we harnessed fire, before we were even human. This ancient code sequence is the nature side of the coin. It is a hard written instinct stamped into our DNA by the experiences of all our ancestors. This ancient code is expressed,  like it or not, by our consciousness.  But what the heck is consciousness anyway?

In an attempt to answer this age old question we need to flip the coin back over to the nurture side again and ask – what about our consciousness?  Where does it come from?  What is it that allows us to look in the mirror and say “Hello me, i recognize that i exist…i think therefore i am.” 

Where does the consciousness  originate?  Some say it is all in the mind…and maybe this is so.  However, I sometimes wonder if it comes from outside the body…another realm of existence that we have yet to identify.  Maybe we and all life on earth are part of this unique and massive energy field…this Singularity…and we are greatly limiting ourselves when we think that we are separate, apart, alone individuals.  But in reality…a reality we have not discovered yet because we are not yet ready, not evolved enough to experience that reality and understand it…maybe we are all connected deeper than we could ever imagine.  Maybe when our body exhausts itself and ceases to exist, maybe our unique consciousness – our soul – retreats back into this unknown realm, this undiscovered country, to rejoin with the rest of the whole where it then shares its lifetime of experiences with its “peers” afterwhich it is reset, and then born again as another lifeform on earth…or another planet in the vast cosmos – and the cycle continues.

I do not believe in omnipotent beings – a god or gods – and therefore i do not believe a devine creator being gives us each a unique consciousness – at soul – at birth.  I have this hypothesis that at birth, our consciousness is a blank clean slate…like a new computer waiting to have is blank but eager to learn storage drives filled up with all our unique photos, music, stories, history – the unique things we save close to our hearts and minds – the things that make us, us.

Maybe we are all born with this same basic, “blank slate” consciousness.  Maybe this blank slate consciousness is exactly the same for everyone – it is a carbon copy of whatever the first one was, whatever the first human being was.  Then, as we live and grow and are exposed to our family, friends, society, the media, religion, politics, science, culture, war, love, hate, bullies, hippies, laughter, passion, sickness, trauma, etc – maybe it is only after this exposure to all these unique outside experiences and influences, coupled with the genetic expression of our instinctual nature knowledge passed down from our unique evolutionary lineages, does our unique consciousness truly becomes ours, and only ours.  It becomes unique to each human due to the unique experiences each of us has experienced as well as the deep genetic connections we brought forward in time from our unique ancestrial DNA.

Maybe the “me” and “you” parts of our thinking brains are exactly the same until they experience life, the universe, and everything around us during our first few years of life – and then we become the unique individuals that we are – we become the you and the me that we see in the mirror.

If all this is so, then to guide an innocent young human into adulthood as a parent, teacher, or mentor, is possibly the greatest responsibility one could ever hold.

Choose wisely.

Think before you speak.

Be a good human.

Do good things.