Defining moment

[Architect]

I have a theory I'm working on and need some data.

Do you consider there is a defining moment in your life? By this I mean an event in your childhood that determined the future course of your life.

In this I don't mean externalities that had a big influence on you and made a difference, but rather events that were personally meaningful and typically determined what you did with yourself.

An example of the first; your parents got divorced would obviously have a huge impact on your life and possibly affect its future direction. This is a large life event, but unless it encouraged you to become a marriage counselor its not what I'm looking for.

An example of the second; a parent gave you a baseball bat, which you loved playing so much decided to become a baseball player.

AVGN did a serious video of how he got into doing video, this is what I'm looking for if that makes sense

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Kc3JqVIIJA

 

[intpz]

I know exactly what you're talking about, it's a very common occurrence in certain (often shitty) movies.

To answer your question - no, nothing influenced me that way, and I have trouble agreeing with the fact that it did when people say something like "Ma daddy used to say that sport is good. Ma daddy gave me a football at my 10th birthday. That's why I'ma football playe' now!" (heavy country accent). I find such occurrences utterly idiotic.



What about you, did you have such a occurrene?

 

[axemblack]

I'm sure you're aware of this, but I think that the idea for this thread is very much oversimplifying this kind of "life-changing experience". To me it seems far more likely that a person will have several "defining moments" during childhood alone, and that this person will continue to have these experiences well into adulthood. It seems a bit far-fetched that the meaning of a person's life is "set" after one of these childhood experiences; personal meaning seems to be much more fluid.
And if you're asking specifically about occupational identity, I still think that you're pigeonholing a person's experience by narrowing it down to one overriding moment.

I think I know what you're getting at with this thread (that self-discovery of the personality often coincides with one of these "moments"), but that way of approaching things is a bit too cut-and-dry.

 

[Vidi]

I have to agree with axemblack, there were many defining moments, and I can confirm that they occur even later on in life.

 

[intpz]

Well at some, or even a few, points I have been thinking if there was such an experience in my life. I couldn't think of something that made me choose to do something because of something.

 

[Milo]

I suppose my biggest defining moment was when I took a biology class with PZ Myers http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PZ_Myers who made me realize that the Bible wasn't true and completely opened my mind. I actually really had a weak inner voice until this event. Once this happened, my thoughts went everywhere and my intelligence expanded immensely. Instead of listening to others and assuming they all knew what was right, I started thinking for myself. I don't think it was just because it was related to religion, but more because it was against what I had taken for granted my whole life. I now do things in the name of what I think is right instead of what others think is right.

My entire childhood pretty much consisted of my parents yelling at me because I always did things the wrong way. That caused me to be afraid to do things wrong and made me into a perfectionist. After I was freed from this perspective I have looked for the unbiased truth ever since.

 

[Lot]

I can't think of a defining moment that really sculpted who I am. I've always been me. Just as I get older I unfold into more of myself. I become more mature and in tune with who I am. My parents always did encourage me to be myself, so that could have played a part in it. They liked the fact that I was weird and didn't want to conform, even as a small child I would go out of my way to be different. I think I might have become a more bitter person if my parents wouldn't have let me be myself, but I would still be an INTP.

So maybe a single moment in a person's life can change who they are at their very core, but I haven't personally experienced it.

 

[Intellect]

I can think of several defining moments, but this one sticks out in terms of my personality (INTJ):

When I was a kid, my parents used to solve jigsaw puzzles a lot. I would always help and, eventually, built up a pretty big collections of puzzles around the house. I also learned to play chess very young and spent a lot of my free time playing against my siblings.

To this day, I still naturally tackle problems the same way I used to solve puzzles (divide and conquer) and I'm good at making connections/seeing the "big picture". I'm sure this comes from my early exposure to puzzles and strategy games.

 

[Proletar]

I have a few. All related to music.

The first one would probably be about two years into first learning to play the guitar/bass. After years of praise from my teacher, he took me aside wondering if I wanted to play Diving Duck Blues on bass. I agreed, and after practicing, I played it along with him the next week. The rush from playing it was just AMAZING, and from that day I vouched to never ever stop playing, to become the very best.

Second is my first actual solo. Again along with my teacher (another one this time), and I had practiced the pentatonic scale. The same feel, but now Improvising my own music for the first time.


After that, I've had a few of those moments on stage aswell - I once was seconds from fainting from the adrenaline. But it still can't beat the realisation of how music works, how you can use it to express whatever you feel and how immensely complex it is. First and foremost, I'm a musician. That, I will always be.

 

[Jennywocky]

I agree that usually a lot of smaller "moments" occur that lead us in a certain direction (kind of like stepping stones that direct how we move across a river, it's not usually just one big large boulder that we bound across on).

I think occasionally though, sometimes there is one large moment that really can push someone in a certain direction. You might have been leaning in a certain direction to start with, but a particular event really sends you over the edge.

(for example, I have one very large moment in my early adulthood where I made a choice unlike any other choice I had made in my life prior to that night, and it led ultimately to dating and marrying a certain person... which had both positive and negative ramifications on my life but definitely changed who I was and who I became. I chose to have one particular conversation with this person, and when I made that decision, I was very aware that if things went in a certain direction, it could change my life forever... and it did.)

So I don't think it's silly. It's just not that everyone has a moment like that, that they can pinpoint so succinctly. Especially with a personality type that typically is hesitant to make those kind of decisions and usually hems and haws around anyway.

 

[Architect]

Thanks Peeps, while certainly not proof this corroborates my little theory. This video by AVGN stuck in my mind, and while he's making a movie and it may not be true, I think in this guys case (probable XSFP) it is. That is, he really did have a defining moment in his life that determined everything that came after (movie/imagination obsession). Then I thought it unlikely that an INTP would respond to a single event as this character did.

If all this is true then it proves that Sensors have plenty of imagination, they just decide to use it differently. Being in the inferior means it doesn't get as much stick time as it does for an intuitive, but it perhaps has more power in a way.

 

[Etheri]

I evolve. Some moments have alot more influence than others, but I can already count serveral big 'turning points' in my life. (Obviously, these are my opinion.)

To me, they're mostly 'unexpected' things. Graduating, birthdays, it's all so irrelevant. That being said, there are clear exceptions (finding a new job, moving out, ...?)

 

[MissQuote]

I am not sure how well this fits into what you are meaning exactly, but i have one particular memory from when i was very small that I don't think was so much a defining moment as a very early moment that defines who I am personality wise.

It was when I was four years old. My little sister and I were living with my grandparents at the time, we had been educated on Christianity in detail so far (by grandparents) as well as Sikhism (by our mother). Pretty well rounded spiritual training for how young I was.

I remember one day my grandma knelt down on the floor in her living room with my sister and I and asked us if we wished to accept Jesus into our hearts so we could be saved.

I remember recoiling at the inconsistency she had just presented me. I argued with her that what she was asking us suggested that it was possible for god to not be in ones heart and that made no sense with everything I had been taught about god thus far.

I remember it being very important that she understand that she was making no sense whatsoever, she needed to be corrected for her own lack of logic on the matter.

Of course I was only four, so I could not get my point across properly.

In the end I stood on the other side of the room with my arms crossed scowling at her and my sister while the prayed together.

Perhaps this moment defined me a bit, it certainly always stands out in my memory, I could not say in what way it defined me aside from it being the first time I remember ever being affronted by someone else's irrationality.

Spoiler

btw, I am agnostic now.

 

[MissQuote]

I did not vote in the poll because there is no 'I do not Know' option.

 

[Jennywocky]

Of course I was only four, so I could not get my point across properly.

In the end I stood on the other side of the room with my arms crossed scowling at her and my sister while the prayed together.

Perhaps this moment defined me a bit, it certainly always stands out in my memory, I could not say in what way it defined me aside from it being the first time I remember ever being affronted by someone else's irrationality.

I don't know if that moment "defined" you, I would say instead that it "revealed" you clearly.

 

[Architect]

I am not sure how well this fits into what you are meaning exactly, but i have one particular memory from when i was very small that I don't think was so much a defining moment as a very early moment that defines who I am personality wise.

Great story. That doesn't look like a defining moment as I meant it, but I agree it certainly showed your temperament operating at a young age.

 

[redbaron]

I got into drumming when I was young and I play hours every day. Sometimes up to 8 on days off.

I don't really know how you want these things to be worded or what you're looking for exactly. I didn't really 'get into' drumming, there wasn't a moment that I suddenly started desiring to or being that way, I just was that way.

Anyway I voted no, because I can't think of any event that suddenly prompted me to want to act or be a certain way.

 

[Proletar]

I got into drumming when I was young and I play hours every day. Sometimes up to 8 on days off.

I don't really know how you want these things to be worded or what you're looking for exactly. I didn't really 'get into' drumming, there wasn't a moment that I suddenly started desiring to or being that way, I just was that way.

Anyway I voted no, because I can't think of any event that suddenly prompted me to want to act or be a certain way.

But you didn't get that sensation of invincibility knowing that you could create your own music, at one point or another? Because that's when I really got hooked.

 

[skip]

I don't know if it was a defining moment but getting my MBTI results back was definitely a turning point. Girls/women aren't socialized to INTP traits and I'd been trying hard (and failing) to be an ESFJ. It was a tremendous and wonderful awakening to find that things I'd always considered character flaws were actually some of my greatest strengths. After that I looked at myself, and others, very differently.

 

[pjoa09]

I am in a desperate need of a defining moment.

Nothing has changed me yet.