That's men for you Padraig O'Morain's guide to men's healthYou're too late, you know. Here you are, agonizing about your personality and finding this, that and the other wrong with yourself and it's all beside the point.
The point is that your personality was made by other people, most of them now dead, most of them people you never heard of. So why don't you stop kicking yourself about something you didn't create in the first place?
Where did you get your personality, then? Some of it was passed on genetically by your parents. Even if you never knew your parents there are aspects of your temperament which they passed on to you through their genes.
Other aspects of your personality were created by your culture. Your tastes, mannerisms and the very contents of your mind will differ depending on whether you grew up in, say, Carrick-on-Shannon or Kabul.
And then there's your psychological inheritance. Are you a bit of a smart aleck? Who was walking around with that personality trait before you were born? Your father? Your great grandfather? One of them passed this on to their kids, just by imitation and it came down to you.
Had you a granny who grew up with a great-aunt who was particularly gloomy? Did she pass it on to your mammy by imitation? Did you pick it up from her? It doesn't have to be a personality trait. It could be a way of walking, of talking (think of accents), or even a particular interest. Maybe you're a horsey person. Maybe it was your great, great, great grandparents who started the horsey tradition in your family. So it wasn't inevitable, when you were in the womb, that you would be a horsey person. It was just part of a cultural inheritance that you can trace back to that venerable ancestor.
These cultural and psychological inheritances apply even if you are adopted. If you are adopted into a family in which the grandparents and the adoptive parents are eternal optimists then there's a good chance you'll be an eternal optimist too. If you're not, don't worry about it - maybe your more cautious nature is part of your genetic inheritance.
Now, I'm not saying that every single thing about you is made up by other people. What I'm saying is you don't have to give yourself a tough time just because your personality isn't perfect and even has some aspects you really, really don't like at all.
And there is no case at all for killing yourself just because you don't like your personality - after all, much of that personality wasn't chosen by you, so why punish yourself? Were you expecting a bright and shiny self? Why?
Consider this: you were created out of people who were just as imperfect as you are. This is true of all of us. So where's the case for berating yourself for being imperfect? I should acknowledge at this point that I owe much of this thinking to a book called Acceptance: Passage into Hope by a Cistercian nun called Miriam Pollard. She begins her book by stating that we arrive here too late. In other words, by the time we get here many, many things about us have already been decided.
That being the case, can't we be a little bit accepting of ourselves?
Realising this can take a great deal of pressure off you. After all, your parents and grandparents and so on were also created by genetic, cultural and psychological inheritances. So give yourself a break.
Basically, your self and mine are made up of old bits of scrap. Some bits are shiny but some bits are rusty. Some bits never really worked for their first owner but got passed on from owner to owner anyhow. So it doesn't really matter that this self of yours clanks and clunks along in a most unsatisfactory way.
Apply a little oil now and then, by all means, but don't try to turn yourself into a Rolls Royce. Because unless you're a car or an airplane engine, there are no Rolls Royces.
pomorain@irish-times.ie
Padraig O'Morain is a journalist and counsellor accredited by the Irish Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy.