Holding Accountants Accountable

Introduction

WHAT MAKES US WHO we are? What is at work to make us enjoy the things we enjoy, to choose our life's work, to cause us to be attracted to certain people and not to others?

We all are very complex individuals – a monumental understatement. While there is a formula for who we are becoming (which is or should be a life-long process), it is highly unpredictable, but here it is:

Nurture (our environment) + Nature (our DNA) + Our Own Choices = Who We Are. The wild card here is our decisions – heavily influenced by the first two addends. Nevertheless, we own our choices.

In my life, it is difficult to separate the environment of my youth from the DNA my ancestors contributed to this equation. My mother's family moved into the agricultural area that would come to be known as Boeuf Prairie in the early 1800s. These settlers from Virginia, Kentucky, Tennessee, and Arkansas arrived in what was essentially a wilderness at that time. Families settling here were predominantly of Scotch-Irish and British ancestry, but had lived in America since before the Revolutionary War.

It is beyond my understanding why they would leave the mountains of Appalachia to establish a community in the hot, humid, insect- and snake-infested region of northeast Louisiana; public records would indicate that they were drawn to the fertile farmlands available in the Mississippi Delta. Nine generations later, my grandmothers, mother, uncle, and sister still live in the same parish as those early pioneers. ...