kartooner

Have you ever won­dered about your ances­try? More specif­i­cally, those who came before you and are 100% respon­si­ble for your exis­tence. I’m sure many of us can attest to the fact that there’s a broad inter­est in gene­ol­ogy and the rea­son is we, as human beings, and inhab­i­tants of this world often won­der about our his­tory. There’s weighted sig­nifi­ance due to the fact that by under­stand­ing where you came from, you only then begin to truly real­ize who you really are.

For the past few months my own family’s his­tory has been lin­ger­ing in my mind. Partly because as I become older my knowl­edge of my family’s his­tor­i­cal back­ground becomes more promi­nent and mean­ing­ful to me. It’s pushed to the fore­front of my thoughts because it’s impor­tant to me to be able to keep my ancestor’s alive through their own per­sonal sto­ries of tri­umph, perserver­ance, hero­ism and conflict.

At times I feel as if I’m secluded in this world, but the real­ity of it is that those who lived tens, hun­dreds and thou­sands of years ago may have expe­ri­enced sim­il­iar sit­u­a­tions and occurences that I’ve had to face dur­ing my life­time. It’s a cycle, one in which there will never be a switch to pause, rewind or fast-forward.

Last week­end I non­cha­lantly asked my grand­mother if she would be will­ing to write down a biog­ra­phy of her life. The night prior to my ask­ing for this sim­ple request I won­dered if she would com­ply. I wasn’t nec­es­sar­ily doubt­ing her by any means, but it’s cer­tainly not an easy task to accom­plish, writ­ing down your life and try­ing not to end up with too much on the cut­ting room floor.

How­ever, after my ask­ing her to con­sider doing this, she sim­ply replied, “I’d love to. For you, I’ll do it.” At which point she went on to tell me a few sto­ries about her life includ­ing tales of World War 2 and the bomb­ing of Pearl Har­bor, two sig­nif­i­cant events in her life­time that would for­ever change his­tory for the bet­ter or worse, depend­ing on how you look at it.

After I got off the phone, I couldn’t help but think about those who weren’t for­tu­nate enough to obtain a his­tor­i­cal ref­er­ence of their fam­ily from a first-hand account. It’s lead me to believe that it’s extremely vital to the preser­va­tion of your ances­try to doc­u­ment your exis­tence through a jour­nal, hand­writ­ten let­ters, blog­ging or by sim­ply shar­ing your story with your fam­ily. Only then will you truly exist for many years to come and you never know, there might even be tall tales made up in your honor. I don’t know about you, but I’d love to become a per­ma­nent aspect of the gen­er­a­tions to come.