SOURCE CODE

Most people might look at DNA as the ultimate source code—the blueprint of who we are. It’s the biological programming written in microscopic language, dictating eye color, height, perhaps even our tendencies toward certain diseases or personality traits. But when I think of my source code, I don’t think of chromosomes or cell structure. I think of my parents. I think of lessons passed down not in strands of genetic material, but in stories, expectations, glances across dinner tables, and arguments that stayed with me long after the words had stopped echoing in the room. My source code was built in the spaces where I laughed, cried, rebelled, and conformed. It was written not in labs or Petri dishes, but in car rides, phone calls, and quiet moments of presence.

You could say I was programmed in the “apple doesn’t fall far from the tree” kind of way. From birth until the age of thirty, everything I learned about how to move through the world—how to behave, how to respond, what to value—was essentially installed by my parents. Like a computer with its chips and circuits, I was made up of more than just DNA. Nerves, guts, bones, blood—these were my wires. But the software, the thing that really ran me, was shaped by them.

My mother taught me how to be kind. How to look people in the eye. How to make them feel welcome. She believed that life’s richest currency was connection—deep, human, and genuine. Before she became the wife of a globe trotting executive, she wanted to be a social worker. She quit her schooling to support him through getting his MBA. Shortly after they began trotting around the globe in the name of his career. She thought if you had friends and family, you were wealthy in a way no bank account could match. 

I can still hear her voice when I’m tempted to isolate, to cut off, to withhold emotion. “Go see them,” she’d say. “Call them. Tell them you love them.” She didn’t just say it—she lived it. She is the reason I stand for the underdog and got into many playground brawls. It’s because of my mom I rescue strays-people and pets. Mom was the mom the neighborhood kids gravitated toward and the reason friends and family came to our summertime, back yard BBQ’s. It sure wasn’t my father. He is the reason they didn’t come. 

My father, on the other hand, believed money was the answer. Stability, power, comfort—these were the things he equated with happiness. He did not have friendships. He had business relations that got invited to our gatherings. If they could not do something for him, he didn’t pay them any attention. He was the dad of “Father Knows Best” during my early years but right about 13 he got a much higher paying job and all emotion drained from his soul into his bank account. He wasn’t unkind. He wasn’t nice either. His affection came with conditions. Perform, achieve, earn. If you could prove your worth through accomplishments or income, then you were lovable, then you mattered. He was a good provider, but not always an emotionally present one. His love was complicated, wrapped in layers of expectation and pride.

Both of them shaped me. Their values often clashing, and I spent much of my youth toggling between those opposing beliefs. Do I chase success or connection? Do I value security or spontaneity? These weren’t just abstract questions—they were the very codes driving my behavior, my choices, my relationships.

By the time I was thirty, both of them were gone. One by choice, the other, not so much. Losing a parent is always jarring, but losing both—especially in such different and complicated ways—felt like someone had yanked the hard drive out of the machine. My programming was frozen, mid-process. I was left alone with their legacies, sorting through the emotional code they had left behind, deciding what to keep and what to rewrite.

And rewrite I did. Life, as it turns out, comes with its own updates. New friendships, heartbreaks, jobs, challenges, triumphs—they all come bearing code of their own. Every person I’ve loved or argued with, every risk I’ve taken or mistake I’ve made, has offered me a chance to revise that original programming. Like any decent coder, I learned how to debug myself.

I’ve taken parts of my father’s belief in self-reliance and financial stability and combined them with my mother’s conviction that human connection is sacred. Now, I don’t chase wealth just for the sake of it, but I do appreciate the security it can bring. And while I cherish my close relationships, I know that caring for myself—emotionally and financially—is also a part of being there for others. I’ve found something in the middle. Not a perfect balance, but a conscious choice. A mix of the two codes that shaped me.

One of the things I’ve come to understand is that we are not just passive recipients of our programming. Yes, we are shaped by the people who raise us, by our biology, by the context we’re born into. But we’re also the architects of our own evolution. We get to choose which lines of code to keep, which to rewrite, and which to delete entirely. That autonomy—that power to change—has been one of the most liberating realizations of my adult life.

Even now, I can feel their voices sometimes, whispering in moments of uncertainty. My father when I’m considering a career move: “Make sure it pays.” My motm when I’m pulling away from someone who hurt me: “Give them a second chance.” They don’t always agree, and neither do I. But I listen to both. I weigh them. I decide.

It’s strange to think about how much of who I am was built before I even realized I had a choice. But it’s also beautiful. Because now that I know I do have a choice, every change I make is an act of self-authorship. Every tweak to my internal code is a statement of who I am becoming—not just who I was raised to be.

There’s no final version of me, no perfect program. I’ll always be updating, revising, learning. That’s what makes us human. We’re not static. We’re dynamic, evolving systems of memory, feeling, and belief. And while I carry the source code my parents gave me, I also carry the tools to keep rewriting it.

So no, DNA is not my source code. It’s part of the framework, sure. But the real programming—the stuff that makes me me—was written in laughter and tears, in kitchen table talks and midnight phone calls, in loss and in love. My parents may be gone, but their code lives on.