My 3rd grade cafeteria had a big poster of Garfield the cat saying "You are what you eat."
This has stuck surprisingly strong with me now over two decades later.
Young Tyler didn't grasp the philosophy then, but they did spend hours thinking about what it meant.

My technical science brain thought about all the food we ate and how we don't only get nutrition from food but how it also becomes, in part, the literal composition of our bodies, that all your meals going back over x amount of time are physically part of who you are now.

My 7 year old self obviously didn't have the language or the complexities equipped at the time, but I definitely remember having these types of thoughts at the lunch table and beyond.

Naturally this sidetracks into the imagination of a fat orange house cat literally comprised of lasagna and spaghetti... which oddly is likely more disturbing to me now than it was back then.

Later I would find that this phrase is more literary and philosophical than biological, and every couple of years it seems to pop up and hit me with another unraveling layer as if of an onion.

Everything you "consume" becomes who you are. All of it. The media you watch, willingly or unwillingly, becomes part of your reality. You adopt parts of language and dialect you're exposed to whether you're conscious of it or not.

Every song, movie, book or game choice will obviously inform and entertain you, but it's Tone will also stick with you. Yes, you can be very happy and read nothing but tragedies, but your brain adjusts and assimilates to what you feed it, and may quietly influence your emotions.

You can't always control what other people expose you to, but you do have control over what you expose yourself to. Think of your mind needing a well-balanced diet as much as your body does.

All this to say, it's valuable to be deliberate about what you choose to be part of your life, in any capacity, because it all adds a little bit of shape or color to the unique and lovely landscape that is you.