On Temperament

Distractibility, persistence, focus, physical sensitivity, calmness, flexibility, are examples of inborn temperament. Times of sleep and waking, mood, and appetite may be natively determined. We see already in children that one is imaginative, another boisterous, one analytical, one instinctively attuned to the feelings of others. Worry, I’m told, is a genetic trait.

            Characteristics can be learned. I’ve seen extraversion taught to small children, and optimism is famously teachable. What can’t be unlearned may be controlled by various means, though the underlying tendency to care or to jump around may remain. Proust thought our repetitive mistakes, what he called our vices, were the key to our selves. I surely know that certain situations require attentiveness if I’m not to fall to disaster; often I know it too late, and this after decades of experience.     

            Experience modifies. Sometimes it moderates; sometimes it tends to extremes. The hot quick temperament and the cool cautious one may face the same experience with differing results. It’s at the conjunction of temperament and experience that character is formed. The temperament that’s tempered by experience has become the quality of the person, for good or ill.

            While temperament is of God, experience comes from the world. The resulting character is ours to use for life and love and blessing.