Our identities snowball through our lives, accumulating more and more
values and meaning as they tumble along. You are close with your mom
growing up, and that relationship brings you hope, so you construct a story in
your mind that comes to partly define you, just as your thick hair or your
brown eyes or your creepy toenails define you. Your mom is a huge part of
your life. Your mom is an amazing woman. You owe everything to your
mom . . . and other shit people say at the Academy Awards. You then protect
that piece of your identity as if it were a part of you. Someone comes along
and talks shit about your mom, and you absolutely lose your mind and start
breaking things.
Then that experience creates a new narrative and new value in your mind.
You, you decide, have anger issues . . . especially around your mother. And
now that becomes an inherent part of your identity.
And on and on it goes.
The longer we’ve held a value, the deeper inside the snowball it is and the
more fundamental it is to how we see ourselves and how we see the world.
Like interest on a bank loan, our values compound over time, growing
stronger and coloring future experiences. It’s not just the bullying from when
you were in grade school that fucks you up. It’s the bullying plus all the self-
loathing and narcissism you brought to decades worth of future relationships,
causing them all to fail, that adds up over time.
Psychologists don’t know much for certain,^32 but one thing they definitely
do know is that childhood trauma fucks us up.^33 This “snowball effect” of
early values is why our childhood experiences, both good and bad, have long-
lasting effects on our identities and generate the fundamental values that go
on to define much of our lives. Your early experiences become your core
values, and if your core values are fucked up, they create a domino effect of
suckage that extends through the years, infecting experiences large and small
with their toxicity.
When we’re young, we have tiny and fragile identities. We’ve
experienced little. We’re completely dependent on our caretakers for
everything, and inevitably, they’re going to mess it up. Neglect or harm can
cause extreme emotional reactions, resulting in large moral gaps that are
never equalized. Dad walks out, and your three-year-old Feeling Brain
decides that you were never lovable in the first place. Mom abandons you for
some rich new husband, and you decide that intimacy doesn’t exist, that no
one can ever be trusted.
No wonder Newton was such a cranky loner.^34