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On Being Me

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 FesteringSore 05 Aug 2014

Found out last year that my grandparents did not marry until about a month after my father was born. Shortly(about two months later) WWI started and grandfather went off with the RFC.

Got me wondering whether my life would have been different if grandfather a) hadn't done the decent thing or b) if he hadn't survived the war. Would I have been the same person that I am now?

I often think that things in our lives today are often determined by events that occurred many, many years, or even generations, ago.
Post edited at 19:07
 Stevie989 05 Aug 2014
In reply to FesteringSore:
A month after is fairly unusual but I wonder just how many of us are responsible for/products of 'shotgun marriages".

I know I am.
Post edited at 19:22
OP FesteringSore 05 Aug 2014
In reply to Stevie989:
> (In reply to FesteringSore) A month after is fairly unusual but I wonder just how many of us are responsible for/products of 'shotgun marriages".
>
> I know I am.
Of course in the era to which I refer, it was a bit more stigmatised.

 Trangia 05 Aug 2014
In reply to FesteringSore:

Isn't that pointless speculation?

You are who you are. Of course all of our personas are shaped by events before we were born. A different series of events and you would have been different, but you would still be "you", because that's the way the cookie crumbles for all of us.
OP FesteringSore 05 Aug 2014
In reply to Trangia:
> (In reply to FesteringSore)
>
> Isn't that pointless speculation?
>
> You are who you are. Of course all of our personas are shaped by events before we were born. A different series of events and you would have been different,

Might have been a millionaire then! :o|
 Cobra_Head 05 Aug 2014
In reply to FesteringSore:


You can take this to any degree of wonder if yo think about it. My great great granddad met his misses when he was kicked unconscious by a horse after he'd bent down to pick a h'penny up he saw on the floor. She was a nurse who was covering someone else's shift because she'd slipped in the bath and broken a rib. The what ifs in that story can make you think.

Best not go there, or is it that we all end up where we are because of the consequences of those things?
 nufkin 05 Aug 2014
In reply to FesteringSore:

> our lives today are often determined by events that occurred many, many years, or even generations, ago

14 billion-odd years worth, if you're counting
 Dauphin 05 Aug 2014
In reply to FesteringSore:

I'm not sure it was. I think that in at least some parts of Scotland, certainly the NE it was common to have an engagement and IF after any rumpy pumpy a woman got pregnant then there would be a marriage. I think it was happening up until around 1900 if I remember correctly.

D
 Skyfall 05 Aug 2014
In reply to FesteringSore:

You should try living with my family background but you are who you are regardless. No excuses, just life,
 Billhook 06 Aug 2014
In reply to Dauphin:

Shotgun marriages were still happening in the 1950's and 1960's up here in Yorkshire!
 tlm 06 Aug 2014
In reply to FesteringSore:

Yeah - it was the same in my family.... In fact, after this, on both sides, my grandparents split up and went on to live with other people without getting divorced....
 StuDoig 06 Aug 2014
In reply to Dauphin:
A Hand Tying it used to be called - basically a "Trial" marriage that lasted for a year (normally tied to a harvest Fair). After the year it either expired or was made permanent. A good "try before you buy" system! Pregnancy / child birth automatically made it permanent though.
In reply to FesteringSore:

I was adopted at 6 weeks, I wonder who I would be now if my mother had kept me?
 Timmd 06 Aug 2014
In reply to stroppygob:
That could be a mind boggling thing to ponder, and odd feeling.

My dad walked through a cornice on Devil's Ridge in Scotland and bounced down the hillside, at about the only point you can do on there, before I was conceived.

Then I was the only baby who came out alive from the premature baby unit, I found out a few years ago.

It seems a lot of life is down to chance.
Post edited at 17:58
In reply to Timmd:

> That could be a mind boggling thing to ponder, and odd feeling.

In a way yes, but as long as you are happy and secure being who you are, and you accept that you cannot go back and change things, it's only an intellectual exercise and a fantasy.

 krikoman 07 Aug 2014
In reply to stroppygob:

Exactly and in any alternative thing could be very much worse. It isn't necessarily true that changing the past would alter your present to be any better.

Be happy in the now, as best you can. The past doesn't exist only the now is real.
In reply to krikoman:

Agreed.
 Timmd 07 Aug 2014
In reply to stroppygob:

> In a way yes, but as long as you are happy and secure being who you are, and you accept that you cannot go back and change things, it's only an intellectual exercise and a fantasy.

That makes a lot of sense.

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