we each have capacity (to choose/want/identify) that we didn’t create, but/so it is our choice to act according to it, or in violation of it, and how. If we did not have that choice, we would never feel dissonance when our choices violate self=other. We would never even feel misplaced dissonance when we take responsibility that is not ours. Violation of our capacity is not necessarily a bad thing. For example, we have the capacity for a lot of power, but it is our choice whether our instantiating of that power in our behavior violates self=other. We have the capacity for empathy, but when that empathy violates self=other (think of a mother who wants to protect her child from every pain, stifling their growth as an individual independent from her, because her empathy is tainted by her identity being too wrapped up in the child), we have the capacity to deny the empathy from determining our choices. Or we can redirect our empathy to fall in line with what is good for the child, and not just the mother (if we are that mother)—(ultimately, if it is not also good for the child, then it will also not be good for the mother…her character, etc.).
In that way, our choices create our second nature/character (virtue or vice—if virtue… then they do not merely COcreate, they willfully fulfill).