Who do you think you are? Lately I’ve been thinking of this question through a philosophical filter, maybe even an existential one. I mean when you get down to it, we really are just who we think we are. We basically create ourselves from our thoughts and our reactions and the stories that make up our world. But maybe the searching we keep doing isn’t about finding our real self as much as it is just knowing where we come from. A sense of connection to our ancestors. To our legacy.
Who Do You Think You Are?
I love this television show. Not just because we are digging into the past of some of our favorite celebrities, but because I’d be interested in these stories regardless of who they were about.
I’m fascinated in your stories. Your conflict. Your solutions. The way everything you’ve encountered has shaped your world. My family’s home was the cradle of fulfilling this need for me. People were always dropping in. I could almost tell the day and time by who had dropped by. And no matter how many years this had happened on almost a daily basis, there were always new stories. New ideas. New things to share.
I started collecting information for a family tree when I was around 16. It was all on paper. A name, a birth date, a death date and if I was lucky a location. When the internet flourished and I had access to Ancestry.com I was connected to others on the family tree that were looking to fill out their missing branches. By the time I was pregnant with my daughter the family tree was eight printed pages long. Names connected to names and I wanted so much more. I wanted the details of a life you couldn’t fill out on a tree. My obsession switched from how far back can I go (1600’s if I do say so myself) to how much can I learn about who these people thought they were.
This is the challenge of documenting legacy. So to push into being active in the presence of “who do you think you are” thinking. I challenge you to pick a value. Pick something that is important to you. And explore how you learned that particular value. How old were you? Who else was there? Where were you? Be present to the moment where the value became important to you. This is part of your legacy.
Blueskies,
Tami