On identity : "The tree becomes strong in the wind" (Seneca : Non est arbor solida nec fortis nisi quam frequens ventus incursat)
The tree is all the stronger as its roots run deep. Geography is destiny, but history is identity. Now what is "identiy"? Gnothi seauton - know thyself - , is the stupidest thing Socrates ever produced. How could I know myself? I am a very different person when at work, or when attending to my forests, in dirty jeans and drenched in sweat, or alone with my wife, or with my mum, or when rolling over the carpet with my grandchildren. Others cast roles upon me, impose on me images that challenge my own perceptions of myself. I am multiple, and I keep changing as I grow older. Which facet of me is the "true" one? One, none, all of them? Even looking inside, I find my own contradictions confusing. And after all, does it matter?
What matters is what I want to be, my effort to stick to virtues and values I have chosen for myself, my effort to get an inch closer to that ideal "self" I have devised. It's an uphill battle, but the only one worth fighting. So everything goes, what I have read, seen, experienced, achieved or flunked, my upbringing and my culture. The innate and the acquired. Voltaire and Descartes made me who I am. Lamartine and Sully Prudhomme made me who I am. Conrad and Golding, even Tennyson made me who I am. My dad made me who I am, every time he kicked my a-- to teach me to behave.
But also, my dreams make me who I am. What would I be without my dreams? They lift me up above the ordinary, the easy way out, the lazy options.
If genetic analyses root me deeper into what I want to be, well, I am grateful for that. The tree gets stronger, and so much the better. What truth there is in the dream is irrelevant. What matters is whether it helps. My known ancestors were farmers most of them, or blacksmiths, or cartwrights... Were they as tenacious as I like to think they were? Who cares, as long as it feeds my energy.
Leave me my dreams, my myths, my legends. They are my truest self.