Choice of lifestyles

So, I’ve been asked to write an article on “choices of lifestyle”. However, this may prove difficult to do, as I don’t believe there is such a thing. At least, not in the conventional way.
It is the common ideology that we choose who we are, that it is up to us as an individual which social groups we fit into (or don’t), how we react to people and situations, we even think it is our decision what clothes we choose to wear. In a sense this is correct, no one else makes the decision for us. But is it a conscious “choice”?
The way I see it, we do not choose any of these things, it is dictated by our past.

A human personality is made up entirely from outside factors such as the society we live within, the things we’re exposed to and how we’re treated along the way. This isn’t an opinion, it’s a simple fact. A person who has been abused is bound to be different from someone who was born with a silver spoon in their mouth. From this point of view, it would seem that past experiences have a very profound effect on who we are, of course every person is different, as we have all led different lives, been subjected to different stimuli.

I don’t think that a so called “goth” or “chav” makes the decision to be that way, they simply act the way that they see fit because that is all they know how to be. Even the less extreme social characters among us are not exempt from this rule, a person may be introverted or extroverted, extravagant or subtle, and can we honestly say that each of these lifestyles is a decision at all? I never chose to be who I am, it just happened, for better or worse we are the people we have become, not through a choice, but because this is simply “us”. Sometimes we may not like who we are, but that will never change, as we do not decide it. If our lifestyle was a true choice, then surely we would never feel bad about anything we did, because we chose to be that way.

We seem to have this ingrained idea that it is us who decides who we are, that “me” is something that we created through different choices we’ve made along the path to the present day.

Until people do something wrong, something that they can’t explain, or excuse, that’s when the believing that they didn’t actually control it comes into play. I don’t believe I chose to be who I am, as surely if I did, then my little misgivings, the bad things I notice about my personality, wouldn’t exist?
In the end, it is easier to accept that our life is a choice, something that we control, because if we don’t control it, then we would be nothing more than walking entities, composed of the past. I am not me because I chose to be, I am me as this is how the world has created me.
What are we, if not reflections of what we have been?