How My Environment Shaped My Life

If you believe in evolution, everything around us evolves during our lifetimes, meaning there is a minute amount of adaptation to the place in the universe where you are situated during the time you live in it. Shaping who you are could be seen as another term for adapting to your environment in order to survive. I have lived in the United States since I was born, however when I visit other countries like Australia and India, the differences between cultures is evident in the way people behave and react. There is a difference between nurture and nature, my genes define me, and on the other hand nurture would deal with my accent compared to my Indian cousin’s accent. I have been shaped by many places, these molds allow me to express different reactions and allow me to see the world in a different perspective.

The last time I visited India was during my summer vacation and during this trip I noticed a great difference between the American culture and the Indian culture. In India, my American side of me felt that everything was unstructured, difficult to exist, and a struggle. While traveling from Delhi to Agra, the routes did not make sense to me, there were a million toll booths, the roads switched from tar to gravel to dirt within a couple of kilometers and the amount of horns honking was horrendous. This is very dissimilar to what I experience in Minnesota, where there are no toll booths, the road is well maintained, and there are a few irritated horns. This different type of culture difference was very strange and unknown. While everyone in India, were not perturbed by the honking and the noisiness, I on the other hand wanted to change way the road’s layout, and redo the structure. The Indian side of me wanted to let it be and...

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...by the way the type of food they cook, the way they dress, and the dance styles. My mom is a north Indian and my father is a south Indian. This separation into types of food allows a convergence to occur between the two types of food. This environmental adaptation is a key difference between India and America. America is often referred to as the salad bowl, rather than the melting pot because the cultures do not join into the majority culture; they rather assimilate into something new and different, which is not always bad.

As a whole we are all affected by environmental factors which play in due to personality. You may find someone who very different from you, but you will find that they will have some similarities with you. Nature gives you who you are, and when you nurture this idea will other people from different places, you will turn out to be the unknown.