Like most people, I try not to judge others. I’d rather give them the benefit of the doubt.

I try to understand their circumstances, their motivations, their values and any other mitigating factors.

But I also try to avoid excusing their behavior and the trap: “That’s just the way he is” or “she can’t help it.” It’s a cheap shot.

Allow me to explain.

Undoubtedly we are all born with a unique genetic code and with familial and environmental circumstances that play a large role shaping the persons we become.

Behavioral genetics attest to this. Heritable traits interact with our environment to account for a substantial portion of the variation in behavior and personality. On some estimates, however, nearly 50 percent of such variation is left unexplained by genes and our upbringing.

The influence of peer groups provides a small piece of the puzzle, and the rest, many suggest, is largely the result of fortune.

Geneticists Eric Turkheimer and Mary Waldron of the University of Virginia describe the fortune that shapes the remainder of the genetic variation in behavior and personality thus: the “unsystematic, idiosyncratic and serendipitous events such as accidents, illness or other traumas.”

I find this answer unsatisfactory. Don’t our responses to these chance events matter?

With this understanding, I would be perfectly justified in dismissing a person’s behavior because “that’s just who he is.”

But this platitude denies an essential part of what it means to be human — our free will to choose and to act and our responsibility for said choices and actions.

To say that someone can’t help the way they are may seem charitable, insofar as we try to refrain from passing judgment, but it denies their ability to better themselves and their responsibility for their own actions.

Do we live our lives passively, just accepting the hand that life dealt us through our birth and life events?

Or do we actively pursue a better life for ourselves and the larger human community?

For most of us, I hope and believe it’s the latter. After all, why else would we make New Year’s resolutions or Lenten commitments or seek counseling or become [insert cause here] activists?

The conversation brings to mind the phrase (and all variations of it): “I just need to find myself.”

Where did your self go? Will you find it hidden beneath the rubble of clutter and dust? Is it waiting to be refined? Will you find it perfectly formed?

Or is it the searching that matters? Does the process of finding yourself really mean actively becoming the person you know you were created to be?

Do we as humans find ourselves or do we create ourselves?
Like the question of “nature versus nurture,” the answer is likely “both.”

Andrea is waiting for an answer to her question. E-mail her at andrea.summers@asu.edu.