Fortunately or unfortunately it seems to me that birth is the most significant moment of your life. I don’t want to say that after that it’s all downhill or uphill but it’s going to be a little different than that moment of birth. Some people might argue that conception is the ultimate moment of your life. I can understand that. I think the discussion of whether the moment of conception or the moment of birth is more important should focus on whether or not the two people most involved in those moments, outside of the child, have a huge impact on the actual future of that child. Disregarding what randomness that genetics and the probabilistic outcome of the genes formed from the birth parents, I think that the moment you’re born is most significant for one of two possible outcomes. What I’m talking about here is whether or not the people who genetically created the child are the same people that are witnessing your birth, or at least should be witnessing your birth and are committed to raising the child. Sometimes, the father simply can’t be there for one reason or another. But if the biological father is the same as the birth father and by that I mean the father that’s put on your birth certificate then the whole outcome of your life has a higher probability of being somewhat normal according to social standards, assuming your biological and your birth parents are the same and committed to being there for the child in the future. By normal, I mean that you’re going to be in that two standard deviation realm of average. Most of us fit in the middle of that bell-shaped curve we call normality. Some of us are in the tails.

If your birth parents are the same as your genetic parents then you have a mom and a dad who were together at conception and together at birth. That makes a big difference in the life of the child, whether you know it or not. Hopefully, those parents are committed, or at least somewhat committed, to a reasonably good future for the child.

The future life of an individual is a function of many, many things. One of them is their genetics. Another one of them, at least in my opinion, is the first few years of their life. I believe that most individuals who study child development would agree with me when I say that the concept of nature and nurture, that is nature being your genetics and nurture being your first few years of life, have the biggest impact on your future of all the things that can be factored into the probability of your life being relatively good or being relatively bad.

Now, I’ve given this some thought and another factor can be where and when you were born. By where I mean which country and even more specifically which zip code, assuming all countries today have zip codes for mail, can have a dramatic impact on the rest of your life. If you were born in a relatively affluent zip code the odds are you’ve got a better chance at a good life than if you were born in a really bad zip code and I define good and bad zip codes in terms of socioeconomic conditions within that zip code. Fundamentally the most important thing about a zip code tends to be the income level and the price of the home in which you were born into.

Now at this point I have to argue or at least espouse my belief that it is simply a probability that determines whether or not your life to be relatively good or relatively bad. By probability I’m talking about whether or not your parents, your conceptional parents and your birth parents, are the same and whether or not they are reasonably affluent or members of a socio-economic class we could call dire poverty. Further, were you genetically blessed by sheer random probability? Yes, life does have a probabilistic determination about it. Your individual life, to some degree, is a function of the social strata in which you’re born into. It’s simply a probability whether your life, at the end of your life, will be referred to as blessed or troubled by your eulogist.

No, I’m not saying that if you’re born into a rich family or a poor family that your life will be either good or bad. But I am saying there’s a probabilistic component. We can all become, not so much what we want to become, or capable of becoming, but rather our life becomes a function of our gifts at birth along with the behaviors that we exhibit during a lifetime. In my mind how your life turns out is simply a function of how blessed you were at birth and how your behavior manifests those gifts you were born with into a life.

We are all born with gifts. Some of them are obvious. Some of us are photogenic. Some of us are physically gifted such as being able to excel in sports with relative ease. Some of us are gifted with the ability to take standardized tests of an academic nature and appear to provide correct answers to those tests without breaking a sweat. Some of us appear to have the ability to create music which is found to be enjoyable by enough people to create a following. Some of us can be electricians or plumbers or fix cars to the astonishment of those of us who can’t. Some of us can program computers. Some of us can build bridges. Some of us seem to be able to deal with financial markets to the degree that they become filthy rich. Some of us turn out to be managers who can effectively steer other humans in a direction that gives meaning to the term work.

We are all born with talents. We don’t really learn which talents we’re born with until we get some age on us, and even then, sometimes it takes a lifetime to be able to convince people that your original recipe for Kentucky fried Chicken is the best there is. Sometimes some of us are simply able to hit a golf ball at such a young age that we become a child prodigy and a thing of amazement to the world of golf. There is no way to know when and if your talents will manifest themselves to the degree that you become full of success and worthy of emulation. The vast majority of us, simply don’t get there. That, of course, doesn’t mean that our life hasn’t been blessed. It just means that it hasn’t been blessed enough so that we become significant enough to the world, or at least a portion of it, that our name becomes widely spread through the media. Then again, some of us become famous for all the wrong reasons. Sometimes, society has a problem differentiating whether a person is famous or infamous. It’s funny how society works.

But lives are individual. The emotions that you feel are your emotions and it’s my belief that those emotions tend to be what you use to decide whether your life has been blessed or troubled. Interestingly, I can meet someone and never really know how they actually feel about their own life. Nor can they actually know how I feel about my life. Further, sometimes I’m not even sure how I feel about my life. I think we all have moments in which we’re not comfortable with the reality in which we find ourselves. Sometimes, I have doubts about whether or not I’m capable of doing what it is that I want to do. Sometimes, I also misjudge those capabilities. Sometimes, I find myself in awkward situations. How you feel about your life is more of a function of how you, internally, interpret your reality. Some of us are better at interpreting reality in a positive, emotionally satisfying way and others of us are not. I have to wonder whether or not that was predetermined to some degree at birth or whether we develop the skill to be able to do that as we move along through life. Sometimes I wonder if it’s perhaps both a function of the gifts we were born with and how we develop those gifts.

On a personal level, I’ve always felt I was incredibly lucky. I was born with enough gifts, at least genetically, that I was able to function at a reasonable level in society. I also consider myself incredibly lucky that my formative years were spent in the care of two wonderful people. I think that people who are born with those gifts, enough genetic material to be able to function in a complex world and the gift of an exceptional environment during their formative years, will, in all probability, turn out to be relatively happy and enjoy life for most of their life. I think there’s simply a probability of whether or not a person will have that experience. I don’t necessarily think it’s predetermined at birth, but I certainly can’t deny that there is a possibility that it is. That’s something we’ll probably never know, or if we do, there’s not much we can do about it. Your birth, in my opinion, is your most important moment and there’s little or nothing you can do about that. The moment of your conception, in my opinion, may well be your second most important moment and there’s nothing you could have done about that either. At some point you just have to accept life and understand that there is some predestination involved simply because of the circumstances of your birth. There’s nothing you can do about that other than modify your behavior to be able to utilize the gifts you were born with, that is who you are genetically, physically, emotionally, and cognitively at your birth, to be able to deal with the reality in which you find yourself. Life is an individual sport. Some of us take those gifts and utilize them to create a better life. Any one of us can do that. All I can say, in the final analysis, is that you’re born with gifts, whether you want to admit it or not, and it’s up to you to take those gifts and do with them what you will.