Nature or nurture?

We live in Fishers, Indiana. We really enjoy living here, but honestly, it’s still a town in search of its identity. We are in the heart of the suburbs, yet we remain surrounded by private farms. It’s pretty cool, though. I love driving 3 blocks from my house and seeing beautiful fields of soybeans and corn….it brings me a sense of peace, I think.

I was driving my son home from the driving range the other day, and for some reason, the uniformity of the fields struck me. Virtually every soybean plant was the same height and consistency, and the corn….well, it looked like the DNA had been cloned a millions times or so.

I pointed this out to my son, and then commented, “it’s no wonder….every stalk and plant was raised in exactly the same environment!” The water, fertilizer and soil makeup these plants grew up in were identical, and the results were consistent with that fact.

It occurred to me that plants, in this case, are not analogous to people. My 4 children grew up in the same house, with the same parents, the same church, in the same schools with, in several cases, the same teachers. Still, my kids have very little similarities….they’re completely different! So it must be “nature”, right??

I was enjoying the brilliance of my observation, when my son astutely pointed out that my “plants”, (my kids), weren’t planted at the same time.

*Sigh*

So I suppose I am back to “both/and”. What do you think?