Are We Born Broken?

The Pulitzer prize winning playwright Eugene O’Neill (1888-1953) said, “Man is born broken. He lives by mending. The grace of God is glue.”

(The Great God Brown)

Years of experience and psychological/psychiatric study since O’Neill’s time, show that the theme of broken-ness and whole-ness in human existence is a huge and complex topic.

We enter the world as newborns with a  unique combination and assortment of genes on our forty six chromosomes. No one else in the world shares our precise genetic makeup. Even identical twins show variations.

Are we born broken? Do we heal/mend by the Grace of God? Luck has something to do with mending but we’re not born broken. We’re born with vast potential to develop along avenues to some extent, but not entirely, dependent on our environment.

 Freud thought a newborn enters the world with a tabula rasa, a blank slate.  Genetic studies, with the possibility of gene mapping, show us that much of our future is determined in this genetic blueprint.

For all intents and purposes it doesn’t appear that it will ever be possible to decipher the degree to which each, our genetic constitution and our environment, determine the course of lives because  no two humans have precisely the same genetic constitution and no two humans experience the exact same environment.

We  know our genetic constitution  predicts a great deal; we know environmental factors can interfere with development,  cause fears, phobias, anxieties, etc., and we  know that ‘mending’ is both a matter of luck as well as an  active process in which the individual  plays a huge role.

Do we take responsibility for who we are and who we become or do we see ourselves as victims?

In Man’s Search for Meaning (1963 ) Victor Frankl writes,

“We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread. They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms…to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way. “

He continues to list the ways in which we find meaning   and direction in life: 1.By doing a deed; 2. By experiencing a value; and 3.By suffering

As Frankl observed in the worst of life’s circumstances, ultimately a person has will and choice.  What matters more than our genetic constitution, is our values, the meaning we find for ourselves in our lives.

Dear Reader: I welcome your comments. (jsimon145@gmail.com)