Dear LPG,

With all the time that we have had recently to really think about ourselves, and with relatively few people to have serious conversations with, I got to asking myself one of the oldest questions I can think of I suppose, and I think that it is a question that we should each ask ourselves a little more frequently than we do.

The question I asked is, ‘Do I really like who I am?’

In my case I think I am reasonably happy with me when I try to take an objective look in the mirror, but it got me thinking.

I recently read one of your articles where (►►►) HG talks about how, as children, we learn to fit in to our societies and basically it is all about copying the people around us, and even though she was talking about her grandchildren, I have deduced that basically we look at the characters around us and pick up on the traits we best like all through our lives.

Each of us is quite a complicated mixture of values and so I would have said that there were more such character traits than research has found according to one viewpoint I found on the internet, although, unlike the people who have spent a long time working all this out, it only occurred to me to take a quick look this morning.

The page I found tells that, over the years, research has whittled it down so that there are now considered only five such character traits, so with surprisingly few to go round, and so many of us people in the world to share them, we have to ask how come we are all so different, I think it is a real miracle.  

With all those years of character copying under each of our belts by the time we are considered older adults, I strongly believe that it is impossible to get to pensionable age without having done something that will make a positive difference to our fellow man.  Once you have sorted that out perhaps you will have another reason to like yourself and who you are a bit more….

UH, Penge.

UH shares the bit of evidence in question…

                                                                                                                     (►►►)