I recently ran across the following quote, from Maximum City by Suketu Mehta. I’ve never heard of Suketu Mehta, but it was quoted in a piece in the New York Review of Books, which was in turn quoted in the Balloon Juice blog, which I read regularly.
Even though my life continues to be dominated by such a central event, nearly a half a century after the fact, I’ve never gotten the sense that this is the norm for people. There are tendencies in people to overestimate either the universality or the uniqueness of their personal experiences, and my WAG is that Mehta was guilty of the former.
We all have experiences of greater or lesser importance, but to the extent I can observe what goes on in the lives of others, my WAG is that most people have a number of key events in their lives that stand out, but having one single experience that is the key experience of one’s life which all the others revolve around is likely not the norm.
But I thought this might be something worth polling my fellow Dopers about. Is there a central experience that dominates your life, or not?
That sounds like one of those simple explanations that is not true. It’s certainly not true for me.
It might often be true, and it might be applicable to folks who have had some religious experience, and then changed their life because of that experience. Or, for those happily married folks, they might claim that meeting and marrying their spouse was some sort of life-altering event. But I think its far from universal. As for the poll, I think I fall somewhere in between #2 and #3.
I would/could say yes. My mother got divorced and she and I moved to Colorado from Illinois when I was 15. My life would have be WAY, WAY different if we had stayed in Illinois. I can’t even imagine.
I legally emancipated when I was 17 and the events of that year will forever shape my view of God, human nature, and the meaning of life. So I would say that for me, this is true.
Plenty of events changed my life drastically. I mean, having a kid for one thing!
I do get the sense when I’m talking to some people that they have gotten an event in their lives attached to their identity. For instance, I suspect certain individuals think of themselves as “Lisa, car accident survivor” or whatever.
No. There’s a continuum of events, big and small. Sure, I could pick getting an American girlfriend as a central event, but that one wouldn’t have happened without all the other smaller events before it.
I’d say it’s either true, but trivial, or not true, depending on how one defines “dominated”, “event” and “shapes and distorts”.
In my life there have been many events which were pivotal points. Limiting myself to places where I personally made a choice:
where to go to college (uni+major),
getting my parents to let me stay there at the point when my mother had convinced my father to make me drop out,
applying for graduate school,
the choice of which graduate school to attend,
rejecting The Worst Boyfriend’s marriage proposal (the one which came just after I’d told him to get lost),
the discovery that my advisor had decided to rip off all his foreign students, and my decision to not let the fucker get away with it,
my employer and my lawyer colluding to make me move to working illegally, and my refusal to do so,
rejecting The Best Boyfriend’s marriage proposal (if only he’d been better able to listen, or I’d been more capable of hitting him with a solid oak clue by four as needed!),
accepting the offer to join the team that would represent the factory where I worked during our SAP implementation,
making it very clear that if there was room in the Core Team for me I’d pretty please love to take it,
getting the offer doesn’t even count, the decision was already made
and that’s without bothering with all the stuff before college or after becoming a consultant.
I was born 11 years after my brother on the exact same date. Yeah – that kinda sorta shaped some things for me but it was more how others related to it all that something they did on purpose.
Hogwash, says I. True sometimes for some people, sure, but I can’t imagine the commonness of the phenomenon approaches anything like “each person.”
My worldview is seen by me through a kaleidoscope of lenses, each ground out in the many decisions I’ve made in the past. Some lenses are smaller, some bigger, but none truly dominate.
My birth? Without that happening I surely would never have been the same.
I don’t really get what is meant by “dominated” here - which may just mean I haven’t had a dominating event. But seriously - that’s a very strong term, which suggests that everything else - tastes, preferences, loves, the need to use the bathroom - is overridden and subordinate to the effects of the event. That’s both pretty hardcore, and wildly improbable. So I suspect that by “dominated” you mean “this thing changed some stuff enough that I still remember it/am feeling the effects of it years later”, in which case I’m sure I have one or two events that would qualify. Maybe. Well, probably not, because of that word “event”.
Probably the biggest single thing that has shaped my life so far is the fact I’m an atheist. But my being an atheist didn’t happen because of an “event”, and any attempt to pick an event and claim that event is representative of my atheism would be a stretch at best. And of course there are many things in my life which are completely unaffected by my atheism - tastes, hobbies, choice of career, dislike of waking up early - so I really wouldn’t say it’s a dominating factor in my life anyway.
So yeah - either I’m completely misunderstanding the question, or nothing dominates me.
There are many pivotal events, but for me there is a distinct demarcation line at THE defining event. That line is bright, clear and marks the absolute division between my former self and current self. I sometimes refer to it as the release date of pullin 2.0.
My wife has a similar absolute event and, like me, life is defined as before/after.
I don’t know how common this is, but I voted yes on the poll.
I voted yes. Because that event had long ranging effects on me that I can still see today, more than 30 years later. Not that I sit around and brood about it, but it certainly shaped aspects of my life and personality that are still part of me.
The statement sounds like a quote from a book, the kind of stuff authors put in the opening paragraphs.
Sure, there were pivotal moments in my life, such as when I joined the Navy, when I lost my brother, and when I got married–all of them had enormous impact on my life, and the absence of any of them would have resulted in a different me.
The person I was before I began openly acknowledging my agnoticism seems different from the me of today. That transition happened about 11 or 12 years ago.
But I wouldn’t call this a “central event” since 1) it wasn’t an event 2) it isn’t like I was that religious to begin with, and 3) I doubt it will be something I continue to give importance 20 years from now. I am fairly sure that 20 years from now, I will consider myself substantially different from the person I am now even if nothing major happens.
The concept of peak experience isn’t anything new. I have gone through multiple experiences that will always stay with me in some shape or form. But not just one.
I married too young at (20) and divorced by 33, but she’s still just 35 miles away from where I live plus she has remarried to a millionaire who just died two weeks ago and now she is a selfish millionaire that denies any wrong blame for our (13) year marriage. Yes indeed I would call that a life changing experience not to mention the two selfish narcissistic children she has supported for 39 years and blames everyone else for their personality problems.
