Nature vs. Nurture

Maybe you’ve heard the saying, “A zebra can’t change its stripes.”  I use it all the time. It means – to me, anyway – that no matter how much you may think someone has changed their behavior, there will be an occasion where that individual will revert back to their original self. Oftentimes, that occasion will be at the most inopportune time.

The thinking is we are born with certain software already pre-programmed into our being. Nothing makes me feel older, as a sports fan, than watching a certain athlete on TV and realizing that I watched that athlete’s father play way back when. I don’t remember when the first time it was that I noticed this (if I had to guess, I would say Ken Griffey, Jr.), but what I do know is that I am seeing it more and more often.

LeBron James is 39 years old and still one of the best players in the NBA.  He is one of the best basketball players in history. It is unprecedented to see someone his age still excelling at a sport that is so dependent on athleticism to succeed. Many believe that LeBron will put off retirement, inevitably, because he wants the chance to play with his son, Bronny, who is 19 and a freshman at USC.

Was Bronny destined to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a basketball star? Was he born with an advantage that none of us have? I think the answer is obvious. There is a reason I am seeing all these sons and daughters of athletes I remember watching now competing at the professional level of their sports. It is not just because they had an awesome coach as a parent all their lives. No, they were given a head start. They were born with a gift that has been passed down to them.

These athletic resemblances are easy to identify. We can see them. What is more subtle to recognize are personality traits that are passed on from mother and father to son or daughter. But, they too, can be obvious.

My partner, Erin, is a sweetheart. Her dad, Terry, is as well. He is a great father to his three children. I can’t say enough nice things about him. But cut him off in traffic and watch out. You will hear some colorful phrases that will have you holding back laughter. It doesn’t have to be someone cutting him off that, however brief, brings out this other side of him, however briefly. Sometimes it could be something as simple as not being able to figure out the remote control or spilling some crumbs on his shirt.

You know how certain kids take after certain parents. I am, undoubtedly, 100% my mother’s side. I look like her. I have the same eyebrows, same lips. I have the same big heart as her. I have the same sense of humor as her. My brother is 100% my dad’s side. He has his eyes. He is good with his hands. He is a hard worker and deals with stress by staying busy.

Erin is a perfect balance between both her parents. She is one of the kindest and most caring people I have ever met. Yet, there will be times when I hear her swear from the other room and I’ll ask, “What’s the matter?”

Her response may be something like, “Oh, nothing. I just spilled some milk on the counter.”

My response to these short, uncharacteristic outbursts from her is, sometimes, “Oh, gotcha. You are pulling a Terry.” She knows what I mean.

We, obviously, know that certain diseases are passed on from generation to generation. That is why doctors will ask us if there is any family history of such things as heart disease, diabetes, or cancer. If you have a family history of breast cancer in your family, guess what? You better make sure you are getting regular mammographies.

It was only recently, however, that all this got me thinking, “Might I have been born with depression? Was it inevitable that it would crop up at some point?”

I just never thought of depression as something that was hereditary. I always thought it was something you had control over. You know the Serenity Prayer:

God, grant me the serenity

to accept the things I cannot change,

the courage to change the things I can,

and the wisdom to know the difference.

I never would have considered depression as being something I would need to accept I couldn’t change. Which brings us back to the whole nature vs. nurture debate.

I cannot think of another scientific debate that has had more insensitive and morally corrupt experiments done to try to prove its theories. Forget about being morally corrupt, these experiments have been downright criminal.

The whole nature vs. nurture argument states that there are some behaviors we are born with and then there are some we learn over life. The question is which behaviors fall into which categories.

This is where some deranged scientist or researcher came up with the idea, "Hey, let's take a set of healthy twins, or maybe even triplets, and split them up at birth and put them into different families of different social and economic classes." The thinking being that these babies all have the exact same DNA, so whatever traits they don't have in common must have been learned behaviors, and the things they all do have in common are hereditary traits.

I first became aware of one such experiment when I watched the documentary, “Three Identical Strangers.” The documentary chronicles the bizarre story of how, in 1980, three young men – living a few miles apart from each other – came to find out they were brothers. Not only brothers, but identical triplets. The first two met when one of the brothers attended his first day of college and people were coming up to him and patting him on the back and greeting him as if they knew him. Was this just the friendliest college in the world? What was going on? When he got to his dorm room, he was met by his new roommate who expressed surprise that he returned to school. When the confused triplet said this was his first day on campus, the equally confused roommate immediately took him to meet his former roommate. 

The story of two split up twins being reunited after 19 years made national headlines. As this feel-good story spread, a third person saw the pictures of the two brothers in the newspaper and noticed an instant resemblance. Turns out he was, also, their brother. They had all been adopted from the same adoption agency on the same day when they were six months old.

Long story short – the triplets became instant celebrities. The brothers quickly bonded and became part of the party scene. Come to find out they all had several things in common. They all smoked the same brand of cigarettes, had many of the same mannerisms, were all into wrestling, and all had the same taste in women. It is, eventually, discovered that the triplets were, intentionally, split up and put into families of different economic classes as part of an experiment.  Spoiler alert: one of the triplets ends up committing suicide in 1995.

So is depression built into our DNA? Is it part of the software already pre-programmed into us when we are born? I never considered the possibility, but, considering my current state, I would love to know.

I always believed that life events and experiences are the causes of depression – i.e., the nurture part. If you are raised in a tropical paradise and never have to deal with tragedy of any sort, there is no way you will suffer depression, right? How could you? Apparently, I was wrong.

Basically, I have come to realize that I had no chance of avoiding my current state of depression. My mother died of Lewy Body Dementia. Her sister died of Alzheimer’s a few years before. Her brother in Canada has been on permanent disability for several years now due to depression. Like I said before, I am 100% my mother. There is no doubt my dominant genetics are from her side of the family.

But even if they weren’t, my dad has two surviving sisters who are both at different stages of dementia. A vast majority of my cousins are on medication to treat depression. You would not want to be sitting at a dinner table with us and discussing life.

When I stop to think about it, it is amazing I have kept my depression at bay all these years. I never realized what an evil force lay inside me all this time. Somehow my mind kept it hidden from me. It is almost like being the CEO of a company. Many times there are issues going on in the company that the CEO never finds out about because his managers take care of most of the problems at lower levels. If these layers of management weren’t in place, the CEO would be overwhelmed with having to deal with everything and micromanaging. The only time things should reach the CEO’s desk are the big problems that the managers cannot handle on their own.

I feel like that has been the case with me and depression. Now that I look back, I see it was always there. I always had depression. It is not something that just started recently due to recent events in my life. To stick to the CEO analogy, my mother had always been my VP of operations. She had always sheltered me from the bad in the world. Almost nothing ever got to my desk.

When I lost my mother, I was lost. That protective barrier came crashing down. I know I counted on her for too much, but I didn't prepare myself for not having her around. And now she went to work for another company. OK, now I am taking the analogy too far. 

So this depression issue has, at long last, made it to my desk and I need to face it.  I needed to understand that my depression wasn’t something brought on by my environment, or something I had done. It was not nurtured. I was born with it. Any amount of measly physical or mental toughness that I think I may have had was no match for this disease that has been permanently entrenched in my DNA.

That was very important for me to understand. First, it is not my fault. Depression is not a disease that can be conquered through sheer will power. You can't just tell yourself to "toughen up" and it will go away. It isn't going anywhere.

Which leads to my second realization – depression can't be beat. It is part of my being. It will always be there. I need to learn how to live with it. Similar to grief, it will never go away.