when the past is the present

at one point in our lives do we stand up and be our own person?  i mean without using the crutch ofchildhood experiences or high school school drama as an excuse for our behavior?  i often hear people say that the reason they are who they are is because of how they grew up.  true, we are products of our environment.  but how we react to stuff, and the decisions we make and how we conduct our lives in the present here and now, we are solely responsible for that.  right?  you hear news stories about how so-and-so did this-or-that because of some egregious act committed against them when they were 10.  i’m not down-playing that.  i’ve never been abused, i’ve never been raped, i’ve never been assaulted, i’ve never seen something so outrageous that it altered my being… so i’m not passing judgment.  what i am saying is, should those things be an excuse for poor adult behavior?  and even things not so outrageous as that, like living with a dysfunctional family or having low self-esteem or being fat or being socially awkward or being whatever… are these things excuses for our behavior?  i hear news headlines about people who do things and it’s inevitable that at some point in the broadcast that it will be mentioned that they were abused as children or they were picked on when they were in elementary school.  ok, those things are not good.  but that should play no part in the situation at hand right?  or should it?  i have some people i know, we all do, who do dumb things.  and they use the past to rationalize the behavior.  i suppose that a lot of that is natural and we all do it, sure.  i find myself doing it too.  i had self-esteem that was in the toilet when i was younger.  and i still have moments of fragility when it comes to certain self-esteem issues.  and sometimes i use that as a crutch for not doing things, or for reasons why i behaved certain ways or whatever.  and i have to stop myself because i’m an adult.  i’ve moved past that part of my life, it needs to not be the filter through which i live. i have another guy i know who, when it comes right down to it, can be a complete ass a lot of the time.  and when i get irritated by this, people have said “oh he had a rough childhood, his father was really distant and it was tough for him.”  ok, i understand that.  i get that that would have been rough.  but should it be an excuse for the asinine behavior to continue? maybe it’s because i never dealt with that sort of thing so my reality is different than his.   but i just get so tired of people not stepping into themselves, figuring out how they want to conduct their own lives and chosing to be themselves and not living vicariously through the past.  again though, i’m not downplaying horrendous experiences, i’m not saying that that doesn’t impact people big time because it does.  i simply think, it’s a decision to rise up and out and be better…