“You are the average of the five people you spend time with.”
I spent some time this morning reflecting on this familiar adage, turning it over in my mind alongside thoughts about my friendships and the trajectory of my life.
The more I considered it, the more profound it became. There’s no question that the people we spend time with shape our norms, expectations, and capabilities in ways both subtle and substantial.
The Environmental Architecture of Language
If decades of academic research into human language acquisition have taught us anything, it is this: we are deeply shaped by our environment.
The language parents speak to their children from birth forms the very first linguistic memories a child absorbs and later replicates through imitation.
Those of us who did not grow up with English as our first language understand this viscerally.
A child in rural China or India has no incentive to speak English daily—the environment provides none. Instead, they navigate the world through Mandarin, Tamil, or any of the myriad languages that form the rich tapestry of human communication.
The language spoken at home becomes the linguistic lens through which they view the world, shaping not only vocabulary but values, moral frameworks, and even which dictionary—English or Malay—they might one day reach for.
The Limits of Environmental Determinism
Of course, human beings are not merely products of their environments. Individual agency matters profoundly.
From Mandarin-speaking environments have emerged scholars of English literature. Jiang Zemin, former General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, rose from destitution to master multiple languages and lead a nation. The mathematical prodigy Srinivasa Ramanujan, working in isolation from formal training, revolutionized mathematics through sheer intellectual force.
Critics of environmental determinism might invoke Noam Chomsky’s concept of the “poverty of the stimulus”—the observation that the linguistic input children receive from parents and caregivers cannot possibly account for the full complexity and creativity of their eventual language use. There must be something more, something internal, that drives our development.
This is true. And yet, it would be unwise to discount the profound role environment plays.
Explicit Rules and Tacit Knowledge
Traditional education tends to emphasize explicit rules: grammatical structures, punctuation conventions, the mechanics of avoiding comma splices. These are lessons that can be taught systematically, absorbed from textbooks, and applied with conscious effort.
But ask someone truly proficient in English—someone whose prose flows with natural eloquence—to explain why a particular turn of phrase works, and they often struggle to articulate it. I’ve observed this phenomenon countless times when questioning students who write exceptionally well. They cannot always explain their choices. They simply know.
This is tacit knowledge—the accumulated wisdom of countless interactions, texts read, patterns absorbed, habits compounded over time. It reshapes how we process, understand, and ultimately articulate language in ways that resist codification. It operates beneath conscious awareness, yet powerfully determines our linguistic capability.
Probability Is Not Destiny
Yes, someone living in an environment devoid of English speakers will very probably never speak English. The probability is higher. Much higher.
But probability is not destiny.
As human beings, we possess a remarkable capacity: we can reshape our environments. We can change whom we interact with, whom we spend time with. Those five friends—whether from family, school, workplace, or public life—can be consciously varied.
Are we not free to choose? Must we accept environments that limit us? Should we settle for spending time with those who refuse to grow, who remain content with mediocrity? Or can we seek out people who share our goals, motivations, and aspirations for excellence?
That conscious choice shapes our trajectory. And it is a choice we must recognize we possess.
Beyond People: Reshaping Your Linguistic Landscape
But environments consist of more than just people. We can also reshape the content we consume, the words we encounter daily.
It is not destined that we spend our days doom-scrolling through social media captions and Instagram reels. We have the option to read substantive blog posts, to engage with the great books that have shaped human thought across centuries – to expose ourselves to good writing and to speech and things that more represent what we want to be as we move from where we are towards a better life.
This is the harder choice, of course. Most people don’t make it.
But precisely because it is both harder and more beneficial, it holds the key to the mastery that so many casually abandon. The path less traveled rewards those brave enough to walk it.
By reading this post today, you’ve already begun to reshape your environment in small but meaningful ways.
Thank you for being part of this journey.
If you’d like to extend that commitment, I invite you to explore our vibrant member section, where you’ll find sample works, detailed resources, and a community dedicated to linguistic excellence and intellectual growth.
Whether you’re writing from Beijing or Bangalore, Cape Town or rural Kentucky, you’re welcome to join us in consciously reshaping the environment of language and thought we inhabit.
The choice, as always, is yours.
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