Osmosis

People around me have often been known to want to absorb knowledge by osmosis.  And then they get hit over the head with the very book they're trying to learn from by me, the biologist, saying "no, damn it...osmosis is the movement of water, anything else is passive diffusion."  So perhaps I should have titled this post Passive Diffusion instead.  I'm not sure why I didn't.  It's an elegant process, regardless.  In referring to everything in colloquial use correctly, I seem to be losing the elegance of osmosis itself.

Anyhow, that has absolutely nothing to do with what I want to write.  I don't particularly want to spend a post rambling about biology, because hell, I could spend a couple of years doing that before I run out, but that's not the point of this blog and I don't think anyone really wants to read it.  With the possible exception of desperate biology students trying to pass a class.  But I don't know any of those who read this blog nor are they my intended audience.  Okay, really done rambling about biology now, moving onto legitimate content.

I think that too often we consider people as entities with rigidly defined characteristics.  Person A is honest.  Person B is whiny.  Person C is sensitive about anything involving relationships.  Maybe it's just me, but we don't seem to consider the fluidity of such traits nearly as often as we should.  Because really, there are underlying reasons for all of these things and they can all change as certain influences in our lives come and go.

Characteristics and personality traits, in effect, are largely influenced by the individuals we encounter in our everyday lives.  The people we interact with the most are the ones who have the greatest effects on us and who we ourselves wind up changing, whether we recognize that fact or not.  In a way, then, we can consider personalities to be composed of traits that work by way of passive diffusion.

Studies have shown that when we are with people we like, we change our behaviors to match more closely to theirs.  After a while, these similarities accumulate and not only do our behaviors change in the short term, but also in the long term.  Before we realize it, our personalities have become more like theirs and, if this appreciation is mutual, theirs have become more like ours.  It is like taking two substrates, one which is initially "your personality" and one that is initially "their personality" and beginning each with a concentration of your own.

As you get closer and get to know each other better, passive diffusion takes place, you absorb bits and pieces of "their personality" from them and they start accumulating some of "your personality" from you.  You never completely lose all of yourself, because the exchange hits equilibrium when you are approximately 50/50, an even split of you and them for the both of you.  This is evident in people who have been friends for a while and couples who have spent most of their lives together.  Sometimes they understand each other without the need to speak, and their mannerisms and habits become extremely similar.

The people we surround ourselves with ultimately change us.  Sometimes it's for the better, other times it's for the worse.  The two are difficult to judge anyhow.  We sometimes find ourselves wondering how we got where we are, what happened to bring us there.  More often than not, it's people who shaped us.  Those we loved and those we hated, all interacting with us in ways that led us where we are today and will continue altering us for as long as they surround us.