The people who remember you from different decades could disagree honestly about your defining trait.

You are not one thing across decades. The friend from school, the colleague from your thirties, and the neighbour from now could each name your defining quality and give three different answers, all honestly. They met different configurations of you, shaped by different pressures, and none of them has the complete version.

If you want a fuller picture, ask people from different periods what they would say and resist arguing with any of it. The disagreement is the finding. It also takes some pressure off the idea that you must have a single consistent character.