Who are you a product of?

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Lately I’ve been sitting with this question a lot.

We talk about being products of our environments; the neighborhoods, the schools, the circumstances we came up in. It is all very real, but I don’t think we talk nearly enough about the specific humans who got close enough to leave their mark on us. The ones whose fears quietly became ours, whose ceilings we started treating as our own. It’s normal to absorb the people we’re around, everything from their patterns, their habits, their definitions of what’s normal and most of the time, we don’t even clock it while it’s happening. It happens in increments small enough to feel like growth.

We’ve Seen It Happen

We’ve all watched it play out in public. Cardi B for example, undeniable talent, her own lane, fully herself in so many ways and yet for a stretch, you could see her absorbing a blueprint that wasn’t hers. The patterns of men who normalize chaos, who treat instability like it’s just part of love. It happens to the best of us. The good news? She’s still here, still evolving, still very much Cardi. That resilience is its own kind of reclamation.

Ciara is another great example because we watched the arc from the start. We saw what it looked like when she gave so much of herself to someone who wasn’t careful with it and then we watched her leave, heal publicly, and build something that actually reflected her. The woman she is now looks nothing like who she was during that season. That’s someone who recognized she’d drifted and chose to come back.

We’re actually seeing another star go through it in real time, Timothée Chalamet (who is still in it) so who knows how this one ends, but you can see the aesthetic shifts due to the orbit he’s moving in. Whether that’s growth, adaptation, or absorption, only he knows. It’s just worth noticing.

Now flip it entirely; Barack and Michelle. These are two people who are visibly, undeniably better because of each other. You don’t watch them together and wonder who shrunk to fit the other. They both grew. Without losing themselves in the mix. That’s the version worth aspiring to.

The mutual ones, the ones where both people are products of each other in the good way, have this specific ingredient: they see each other clearly, they respect what they see, and they want to learn from the other person. In the other dynamic, one person expands and one quietly contracts. It’s not always intentional either. Sometimes the louder personality often doesn’t even realize they’re taking up more than their share of the air, but one person walks away from that season less themselves than when they arrived.

Look at Yourself First

Now, it’s always easier and more satisfying to look outward; to identify whose fingerprints are on someone else’s life, but the question that actually changes things is the one turned inward:

Who are you a product of and is that who you want to be?

Before you answer, remember that we’re not talking about your partner or your friends or whatever celebrities tug at your attention. I’m talking about you. You know.. those little habits you’ve picked up without realizing or whatever thing you stopped doing because someone made you feel shitty about it in the past. The question lives between who you are and who you actually are.

Some questions to sit with

When you state a strong belief, can you trace it back to yourself? Or does it lead back to a room you were once desperate to stay in? How many of your “opinions” are just the ones that kept the peace?

What did you want before the loudest person in your life told you what was realistic? Is the ceiling you’re living under yours or did you borrow it from someone who already gave up?

What do you keep repeating that doesn’t actually feel like you? Where did you first see it modeled? Who taught you that this was just how things go?

Who leaves you feeling more like yourself after time together and who leaves you feeling slightly off, slightly smaller, slightly uncertain about things you used to be sure of?

Have you ever been the louder personality? Have you ever been the one whose presence caused someone else to contract?

Re-centering.

I think it’s easy to feel stuck when we realize these things but there is a way to re-center. First thing and most important thing is to get quiet. Take some real time alone without filling every gap with noise. Absorbed identities are loud while your actual self tends to speak underneath all of that, but you have let it.

Allow yourself to go back to old things without justifying them. I know you remember those interests you had before a particular person or era took you a little too far away from yourself. We have to remind ourselves to follow them without needing them to make sense to anyone else or be productive (and without the need to monetize it, either).

Take note of what you defend too fast, too. Sometimes the beliefs you’re quickest to protect are often the ones you’re least sure actually belong to you. A great reminder is that real conviction doesn’t usually feel threatened by a question.

Once you’ve reflected, try to trace the pattern back to see its roots. When you understand where a behavior came from, you stop mistaking it for personality and you give yourself room to put it down. It’s also what solidifies how you choose your influences moving forward. To be in a relationship with the world, with your own life, means that you’ll always be shaped by people and that’s okay. The goal is to be intentional and to let people in without letting them overwrite you.

You were someone before all of this, don’t forget that.

-marr