Are we really 'us'?

Went to the cinema last night to see ‘Brideshead Revisited’. It was serialised years ago on TV to much acclaim. I remember it but never watched it so possibly late 60s/70s. The opening scene was a young man ‘There’s not much I can tell you about myself except my name, Charles Ryder, the rest of my thoughts and emotions are borrowed from other people’. Since the film was a complete bore, nicely filmed, nicely acted but just no grab, it got me thinking if we really know who we are. You tend to believe that as an intelligent adult you have the ability to think things through and though you can listen to debate you are making up your own mind. But I’m not so sure. Are we a product of parental views picked up until the magic age of 7 when everything is basically instilled - that life view, the wrongs and rights or, as in the film, views instilled by religion? Is everything else given a passing nod for the sake of political correctness? There is a poem by Philip Larkin:

They fuck you up, your mum and dad,
They may not mean to, but they do.
They fill you with the faults they had,
And add some extra, just for you.

Maybe they do but I am still a big believer in choice and to blame elsewhere for our faults is perhaps merely to make us feel better. If my parents were openly racist or homophobic surely I can argue that one through that because I fall for men why could it not be possible for a woman to fall for another woman or a man to fall for a man. If a racist has a joke and a friendly chat on the phone with a black guy with a completely English accent, can he not tell himself, when he realises (having not seen him), that under the skin we are all as likeable or dislikeable as people the same colour as us. But then there are other views that are difficult to change. I completely understand the want of children, a family, but it did not happen for me even with assistance so that’s that. The other day on TV there was a woman who went ahead and had a baby (not sure how he was created as there was no father around) despite there being a risk she could die because she had a heart problem. The child was now 7 but she was not better. That’s selfish surely to bring a child into the world because YOU want one (for what?) but knowing there is a good chance he will be an orphan before he reaches his teens. Looking at their relationship I am under no doubt that his life with her would be far better than many of the disjointed, badly fed, foul mouthed families I see regularly through the city, overweight and eating as they go. But does that make it right? Freedom of choice allows it so should I rightly be judging. Maybe not but you can’t not have a view.
At the start of the film Charles Ryder said all his emotions were borrowed except one – guilt. I must have missed the point completely or it was one of the moments I drifted because at the end I could not see what he was supposed to be guilty about. As a young adult he was seduced by the glamour of a titled homosexual but for him it was a phase and there was no implication that the relationship itself was homosexual. He fell for his friend’s sister but in the end he knew he could not be happy with her, her strong Catholic leanings were something he just could not grasp. What was the guilt? How many of us marry the first person we have a relationship with - are we all supposed to be guilty for letting them down and moving on? Was it the religion, that he had never understood the strength it had in the family and that had he realised sooner he would never have got involved? Who knows, if they can’t direct it or edit it to make it obvious why should I try and fathom it?
P.S. If Philip Larkin is too miserable there is another version:
They tuck you up, your mum and dad.
They may not mean to but they do.
They give you all the quilts they have
And add some pillows just for you.