Once it was believed every cell was different, almond shaped muscle cells, plate shaped skin cells, balloon shaped fat cells, cup shaped goblet cells, pyramid shaped bladder cells.

But now it’s known all blood cells come from a stem cell which makes blood cells, white blood cells to attack germs, red ones to carry oxygen and waste.

There are a few varieties of those stem cells, which make many types of cells each.

But there is the embryonic stem cell that can make those few types of stem cells.

And the process can be reversed, from a skin cell to a cell that can become anything including egg or sperm cells.

A person can be made of a skin cell now, hasn’t been done that I know of, but can be cloned that way (the Stem Cell Revolutions documentary explains it very well for a non-science background person who cares to learn).

It was to avoid using embryonic cells for research that cells were reversed and thus the ethical problem of using embryos was solved by perhaps a bigger potential ethical problem. It doesn’t have to be a problem, but it depends on how the future decided to use the technology.

I think this truth of our body is also mirrored in minds.

About two days ago I found myself in a deep way mentally and emotionally in the phlegmatic temperament.

The temperament system has choleric (fiery), melancholy (sensitive), phlegmatic (calm), and sanguine (joyful) people. The system is ancient, some things are wrong like that the amount of blood or water in the body is the cause of the temperaments, but I find a large truth common to all groups of people I have been reflected in the system.

I wondered who am I? What is my purpose? Why am I different than my family members? What can I do in this world, what is the way I can use my talents to help?

A few days ago I found answers to my questions, that had I a mentor or wise family member, perhaps I would have learned at a much younger age… but nonetheless I just learned about two days ago (at least at to a level one kind degree).

Who am a I? A calm person, human, but kind of even keeled. I’m was inspired by Scott Carpenter, I’m not as rebellious and good at piloting as that, but I’m that calm.

It drives my husband nuts when he is furious and I’m serine, but that’s just the only way I can be most the time, and I’m kind of over apologizing for the way I was built by now.

Once upon a time I was different, a very long time ago I was a happy baby. Before my parents began to fight and split, when I had a dog, when life was good.

My husband has a half sister who tends to be melancholy, thinking of her I wondered what she was like before, he remembers her as a happy baby, her dad was old when she was born and died while she was young, I have no idea what else, but that would be enough to change someone.

Not the event, but the beliefs picked up during the event.

I know four people who lost their parents early, two are melancholy, one sanguine and one phlegmatic. It’s not primarily the events that happen to you that change you, it’s your mind that changes/interprets the events.

My sister was pretty melancholy as a baby and most her life, but in college she became more outspoken and choleric and upon entering the work force became more and more choleric then melancholy.

So we are in a way flavored by our beliefs, but not stuck in them. We start capable of most things, life goes on, we begin to soak in the seasoning of our thoughts, but we can always rinse off and resason.

We are like stem cells, we can go forward in the way we choose, we can go backwards towards a new fate, but I find I don’t want to change my core.

Sure I may enjoy a sad song and melancholy moment, I do have a choleric moment when my computer breaks (but I sigh and find a different way rather than hitting my computer), I do have sanguine moments smiling back at my joyful 1 year old son grinning at me or kissing my cheek, but my core is phlegmatic.

It doesn’t matter to me the exact amount of each type, I know all four pieces are part of the recipe of being human, I have them all, I will use them all, but knowing which is my core is extremely emotionally grounding, mentally empowering and enlightening as to in what ways I can shine.

Knowing myself was needed for me to love and accept myself, now I have a peaceful, easy feeling I’ve been lacking for many years (I think since age 12).

I finally know who I am at my core. Kind of like Pete Nelson, the tree house builder, kind of Scott Carpenter the astronaut concerned with the human experience of space, kind of Henry David Thoreau the writer.

Knowing myself better feels a little bit like coming home to the Tahoe woods I grew up in.

If someday I’m different, I will accept it as it comes, it seems people can change, but do so at a slow rate absent major cataclysms.

What I learned, to find yourself you have to let go of what others expect, for at least an instant, and be willing to accept the truth of who you are in the present (which prevents an perfectionist from ever knowing themselves, as we humans are very imperfect, but very pluripotent).

I did at times hate myself instead of being content, but I think that was when I was trying to fill sanguine shoes far beyond what I could.

I don’t like purple for phlegmatic, I like green for us and yellow for the sanguine.

Thank you for reading interested in knowing how you identify if you care to share? 💚